


Of Backups And Outcasts

by KaSaPe



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dragons, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Fluff and Angst, Injury, M/M, Royalty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-30 02:43:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10867374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaSaPe/pseuds/KaSaPe
Summary: Lance, a young prince second in line for the Altean throne, sets out to prove himself. He wants to kill an injured dragon that attacked one of their villages and escaped the knights that were sent after it. Much to his surprise, the dragon turns out to be a lot more human than anticipated - and thus begins a friendship that, despite having to be kept secret, changes his life for the better.It's the story of how a backup and an outcast fall in love.





	Of Backups And Outcasts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WitchyBitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WitchyBitch/gifts).



> My fill for the prompt "Lance is a prince that sets out to prove himself and finds an injured dragon instead". It was supposed to be between 2k-10k words. As usual, things got out of hand... despite me trying to keep it short >.>
> 
> Also note: there is less violence and more the occasional description of an injury that made me put the archive warning there. It's not that graphic (hence the T rating) but it's better to be safe than sorry, right?^^'

For as long as Lance could remember, kingdom Altea had been a peaceful place. Granted, he hadn’t always lived at court so he wasn’t sure whether his impression of the political atmosphere was entirely correct, but he figured that anything past seven years didn’t matter much anyway. The point was that right now the kingdom was a truly peaceful place, united in itself and in good relationships with the surrounding realms.

There was only one threat to them all: dragons.

_Those fucking dragons._

Lance might not have spent his entire childhood at court, but the dragons were a threat all throughout the kingdom. They were a problem here as much as they had been a problem back at his mom’s place. While it was uncommon for them to attack big cities, he had witnessed enough people of lower standing coming to his parents or the king for help after their villages had gotten destroyed. Once, just once king Alfor had allowed Lance to accompany a group of knights back to such an attacked village - the smell of smoke and burnt flesh and the image of bloodied blankets would forever haunt his dreams.

Point was, everyone hated dragons. Lance was no exception. Whenever a group of knights got sent to investigate sightings of one, he spent every waking moment with either Hunk or Pidge. He and his friends distracted each other well from their worries. And when they heard that the knights came back, all three of them would rush to a window to search for Shiro.

Shiro, who was currently away again. And had been away for five days now.

“Piiiidge, tell me something interesting!” 

Pidge scoffed and snapped the book between her hands shut. “This _is_ interesting.”

“It's really not. I couldn’t care less about how watermills work,” Lance whined and flopped backwards onto his bed. They were in his room, Pidge sitting on her place on the windowsill and Lance miserably counting the swirls in the ceiling. So far their attempts at distracting themselves from Shiro’s prolonged absence hadn’t been all that successful. Maybe it was because Hunk was missing too.

“Okay! Whatever then! What do you want to hear about?! This is the third topic you just flat out rejected!”

Lance scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Maybe that’s because you always pick the most boring and irrelevant-” Before he could finish his sentence, there was a loud knock on his door. It was probably for the best, tensions between them were high and he had a feeling that Pidge was less than a second away from snapping at him.

“Lance? Lance, are you in there? The guards said you were in he-”

All at once, both Lance and Pidge perked up. “Hunk!” he cheered, jumping to his feet and hastening towards the door. Pidge was right behind him, her small hands clinging to his shirt. As soon as he had reached the door, he threw it open to be greeted by the sight of his best friend beaming at him.

“Lance!”

“Hey, big man, what’s up?” Lance laughed as Hunk pulled both him and Pidge into a hug. Pidge’s bony elbows dug into his side and he grimaced a little, trying to wiggle away from them. “Move your sticks away from my ribs, please and thank you.”

“That’s rich, coming from you. Your arms are barely bigger than mine.” Lance couldn’t see it from his position mushed against Hunk’s shoulder, but he was almost sure that she was rolling her eyes.

Once again Hunk saved an oncoming argument through his voice. “Guys, guys, Shiro is back! He’s meeting with the king right now and he’s looking a little worse for wear but he says that he’s fine and they didn’t lose any men this time.”

Lance lit up as if Hunk had just told him the best news of his life. “He’s okay?!”

“What are we waiting for then, let’s go!” Pidge’s muffled voice came from his lower left. She was squirming in an attempt to escape their group hug and Lance let her up. Grinning broadly, he gripped Hunk’s arm and pulled him after the small girl.

“Hell yeah, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

 

* * *

 

“Um, guys, I don’t know how to say this, but I don’t think that we’re allowed to-”

“Shh!” Lance hissed and pressed a finger against Hunk’s mouth. He and Pidge were practically glued to the door to the throne room, Lance having sent the guards away ages ago. Unfortunately, the wood was rather thick, they were barely able to make out the words that were spoken on the other side.

“...dragon attack… cattle gone, not enough food for…”

Lance had said it before and he would say it again. _Fucking dragons_.

The king’s reply was inaudible, but he managed to pick up on Shiro’s next words. “Yes, the dragon escaped. It is injured though, so I do not believe that it will be a threat for the village again - at least in the near future.”

“...risk sending… after?”

There was a brief silence, then Shiro piped up again. “If there is one thing that is more dangerous than a normal dragon, it is an injured dragon. They fall into panic and their attacks become even more ruthless than before. In my opinion, our best chance would be to hope that its wounds will keep it from hunting and leave it to starve to death.”

Lance detached himself from the door. He had heard enough. As soon as he straightened himself, both Hunk’s and Pidge’s eyes fell on him.

“...Lance?” Hunk asked cautiously. Lance gave him his most winning grin.

“He injured the dragon.”

“Well yeah, of course he did. That’s his job,” Pidge said. She was frowning as if she didn’t quite understand what he was trying to say.

Contrary to her, Hunk picked it up immediately. “You better not be thinking what I think you’re thinking.” His hands were wringing together nervously, underlining the worry that was almost palpable in his voice. “Because that is a bad idea. A very bad idea. You know there is a reason they keep you from fighting against dragons.”

Shrugging, Lance put his hands together and stretched them in front of his body. “Yeah, so that I won’t die. But the dragon is injured and I am a trained fighter, even if I never get the chance to prove it.”

Finally, Pidge’s eyes widened in understanding. “You’re planning to-”

“No, Lance. You can’t do that. It’s dangerous, you know what happened to your father-”

“Hunk,” Lance said, grabbing his biceps in a reassuring manner. “Relax. It’s not like I’m planning to go alone.”

A big, fat lie.

He wasn’t about to admit that though. Hunk would definitely try to stop him - or worse, _come with him_ , Hunk wasn’t a trained swordsman in any way - and he couldn’t have that.

His best friend frowned, but his stance relaxed a little. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I’m gonna talk to Shiro.” Grinning confidently, Lance spread his arms. “They can’t keep me cooped up in here forever, I am a fighter! I seek the adventure, the glory, the unknown - I was born for that life. Once I helped to kill a dragon they won’t be able to deny me knight ship anymore. And then imagine my reputation - prince _and_ knight? The ladies are bound to love it.”

Satisfied with his reasoning, Lance nodded to himself. He was pretty sure that Hunk and Pidge exchanged unconvinced glances behind his back, but that didn’t matter. He would show them. He would show them all. He would show them that he was more than just a backup prince that struggled with his academics, he would show them that there was more to him than just being a spoiled kid.

Yeah. Lance would kill the dragon and show them.

 

* * *

 

Of course, he never approached Shiro about it. Instead he waited until there were just a few hours left to sunrise, then he snuck out of his window and into Coran’s study. His teacher was a kind man that had trusted him fully, he had given him a key to his study years ago. Lance felt kind of bad for betraying his faith like that but he knew that he kept a key to the armory in the second drawer of his desk. And he really needed an armor for what he was about to do.

Lo and behold, there it was. Stealing some armor and sneaking out of the castle was an easy feat for him, he had done so countless times before. Okay, not really the armor part, but he was well-versed in the sneaking out part. Usually, he was joined by Pidge and Hunk, but he had been the one to discover most of the secret routes so he didn’t have any problems with evading the guards.

Next, he had to sneak into the stables. That was even easier, he just had to give the stable boy two silver coins (and, hey, if two copper coins would have already done the deal, no one was here to call him out on that) and lead Kaltenecker out of her box. It was the flipside of living in a peaceful kingdom, Lance mused. Should anyone ever really try to break into the castle and assassinate him, they would have an easy time.

Not that he was all that concerned about it. He had survived for seven years already and he was a skilled swordsman, he could easily fend off any intruders. No problem at all.

Borrowing a few rags from the stable boy, Lance wrapped his chainmail up. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself by making too much noise. Unfortunately, that also meant that he could only carry a wooden shield with himself, but he was pretty confident that he would be able to defeat the dragon anyway. If a dragon was close enough that he had to use your shield to defend himself, then he’d be dead either way. And the armor would protect him from most of the fire, it would be fine.

While he waited for the sun to come up and the first people to leave the city, first doubts came up. Shiro had said that injured dragons were more dangerous than normal dragons, but that was just an exaggeration, right? He had just said that because he didn’t want to send any men back there. No risks were even better than low risks. He was just keeping confrontation to a minimum. Lance would be fine.

But what if the dragon set fire to his shield? He could seriously injure himself if he didn’t throw it away fast enough-

Scoffing, Lance shook his head. He had also packed some very basic medicine stuff, he would be fine. He would kick the dragon’s ass, wrap up any minor injuries he would have sustained and come back to the city with one of its horns as proof. At this time tomorrow, everyone would be busy with preparing a celebration party and no one would be able to talk shit about him anymore.

No more 'backup prince'.

Lance couldn’t wait.

 

* * *

 

Getting out of the city hadn’t been the easiest task, but he had managed. One of the guards had recognized him but backup or not, he was still a prince and they still had to listen to his orders. He could only hope that the guy would keep his promise and not inform Shiro or the princess of his whereabouts.

Not that he knew where Lance was really going. According to him, Lance would be on a trip to visit his family. Pidge and Hunk would immediately see through that lie, but Lance had faith that his charade would hold for at least day. And that’s all he needed - the dragon had escaped towards the forest in front of the Great Mountain, he would be able to make the trip there in half a day, tops.

So that’s what he did. Sit and ride towards the forest, imagining what everyone’s reactions would be to him coming home victorious. Shiro would be proud, for sure. Hunk would cry and hug him, preparing his special chicken meal for the celebration. Pidge would hug him as well and she’d have the biggest grin on her face when she’d tell him that she always knew he could do it. Allura’s eyes would sparkle and she would beg her father to be the one to knight him. Coran would give him a proud shoulder squeeze and personally assure that the entertainment for the celebration would be of supreme quality.

Oh man. Lance couldn’t wait to return back to the castle. And that would only be the reactions of the people at the capital, wait until he could tell his mom about the whole thing.

At noon, Lance had almost crossed the entire forest. To no avail though, there were no signs of an injured dragon anywhere. No big drag marks or burnt trees. Absolutely nothing. When he reached the edge of the mountain in the early afternoon, he decided to take a break and eat some of the tart he had bought from one of the merchants just outside the city. It was a totally justified break, he was hungry and Kaltenecker deserved a break before they would attempt to climb the mountain. They couldn’t face off against a dragon if they weren’t in top condition.

The moment that Kaltenecker began to anxiously turn her ears and walk back and forth as if she wanted to run, Lance was on alert. He tugged her away from the tiny stream and behind a big boulder, unloading her saddle and putting on his shield. Luckily, he already wore his armor, that was one thing less to worry about.

Then he waited.

He didn’t have to wait for long. Just moments after he had drawn his sword and gotten into position behind another boulder, he could feel the ground beneath him vibrating as if something enormous made its way towards him. All of a sudden, his heart rate began to pick up and he began sweating beneath his chainmail. It had already been hot enough before his nerves decided to act up, but now the heat was nearly unbearable.

 _Relax, Lance,_ he told himself. _You wanted to do this. You can do this. You are trained for this._

Yeah. Yeah, he could do this.

The vibrations grew louder. Lance focused on his breathing and closed his eyes. The dragon would be here any moment now.

There was a sound of trees snapping in half and Lance forced his eyes open again. The vibrations were now strong enough to make his chainmail clink - damn, they even made the grip on his sword unsteady.

No. No, he couldn’t focus on that. He had to concentrate on his technique. He had to breathe. Any moment now he had to be ready to spring into action.

The dragon stepped out of the forest and into the clearing, making Lance tense his muscles. _Now_. It was now. He had to wait until the dragon passed him and attack him from the side, hoping that it wouldn’t spot him as easily. If he could just reach its belly before it saw him, he could kill it within moments.

Licking his lips, he breathed out one last time before lifting his head to try and get a visual on the dragon. It had stopped in its movements, if the lack of vibrations was any indication. Hopefully it was facing away from him and he could-

Yellow eyes were staring straight at him. A loud squeak tore out of his throat and Lance quickly ducked behind the boulder once more. His heart was racing, the dragon had already discovered him. He had to get away from here.

“Hey, you! You, hiding behind the stone!”

Lance’s face contorted in panic and he gripped his sword a little tighter. Five seconds, then he would run.

“I know you are there! I saw you! I can smell you! Where are the others hiding?”

Three seconds now. The dragon thought he had teammates. Good, excellent, that’d give him an advantage, he just had to figure out how to use it-

“Get lost before I make you!”

But Lance was too nervous to get his brain to work properly. The dragon was so focused on him, that he couldn't think of a way to use the dragon’s assumption to his advantage. He would have to resort to just being quick and hope for the best.

A deep, growled “I warned you” was the only sign he got before he heard a loud swishing noise. Lance yelped and ran behind the boulder to his right - and just in time too, the dragon had used its tail to smash the stone he had hid behind before into pieces. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered Kaltenecker making a noise of alarm and running away, but he didn’t have time to stop her. The dragon was already bringing its tail down on the next stone, forcing Lance to hide behind his shield and duck behind another row of rocks.

This wasn’t working. He couldn’t just keep running like this. He had to do something.

Waiting until the dragon shattered the next stone, he sprinted out in the open. The dragon’s back was turned towards him but its head was twisted around, eyes locking onto him immediately. Lance had barely enough time to lift his shield when the first wave of fire hit and set it aflame. Cursing under his breath, he threw it aside - it had singed the hem of his shirt, but there was no actual damage done. Not that Lance was able to feel much through the rush of adrenaline in his veins.

When Lance saw the dragon open its jaw again, he thought that he would die. Raising his sword in a feeble attempt to hold any flames off, he kept running towards it.

But the expected heat never came.

“Wait, you - you’re just a kid, what are you doing here? Go home, this isn’t something you should be doing.”

Fuck the dragon.

Fuck the dragon and everyone else that told him the same thing over and over again. Lance was not weak. He was not weak and he would prove it to everyone. The dragon’s arrogance would be its demise.

When the dragon noticed that Lance wasn’t stopping in his advance towards it, it hastily tried to take a step to the side. But Lance had counted on that: he had seen the huge gash that decorated its right side, deep enough to cut muscles. The red blood had stained its equally red scales and given it a darker tint where it had dried already.

Yes, Lance had counted on that. So he wasn’t surprised at all when the dragon’s right side gave out underneath the sudden increase in weight, making it crash to the ground and expose its belly.

Smirking, Lance lifted his sword and looked the dragon dead in the eye. “That’s checkmate for you.”

The dragon’s eyes widened in panic and it opened its mouth as if to burn him, but once again the expected burst of fire never came. Lance had been prepared to die, he had braced himself for the sudden onslaught of pain but it just- it never fucking came and Lance was about to murder that thing that refused to kill him-

At the very last second, Lance twisted his body around so that his sword only grazed the scales, making him crash into the dragon’s body. Both of them let out a yelp of pain, though Lance supposed that the dragon complained about something digging into its wounds from its other side that was pressed into the ground. Its body was hard and rigid, barely giving in despite Lance’s momentum. His arm scraped along the scales and he was pretty sure that his shirt was ruined now.

Then it came all to a standstill.

Unfortunately, that meant that his rational thoughts kicked in again.

Shrieking loudly, Lance stumbled back from the dragon’s body and pointed his sword directly at its nostrils. What the fuck had he been thinking?! He could have killed the monster! But no, he just had to- to think that it had _emotions_ \- and he had stopped. What was wrong with him?!

The dragon, on its part, seemed to have similar thoughts. It watched Lance with huge, confused eyes but didn’t open its mouth again. It seemed frozen to the ground, just as Lance was.

“...why did you stop?” the dragon finally asked after ages of silence. Its voice was as deep and terrifying as ever. Not that Lance really cared about that; he was almost hysterical as he tried to make sense of the situation. He had wasted his only opportunity to get out of here alive!

No, no. He had to stay calm. Anxiety had never helped anyone in a situation like this. Looking at it objectively, the dragon didn’t seem too keen on killing him right now.

“I don’t know, why did _you_ stop?!” Lance exclaimed, his voice several pitches higher than usual. His sword was still pointed directly at the dragon’s face, as if it couldn’t directly burn him to a crisp before he even got the opportunity to start moving. “You’re freaking me out, you’re supposed to kill me!”

Much to Lance’s surprise, the dragon’s face seemed to change at that. It was almost as if it had human expressions - this one resembled skepticism with its one eye slightly larger than the other and the corners of its mouth turned downwards. “I could say the same thing about you.”

“I - I came here to protect the villages from you! You tried to eat us!” he yelled.

Slowly, as if it didn’t want to startle him, the dragon laid its head on the ground. Its eyes stayed fixed on Lance though and he was pretty sure that he saw its tail flickering in his peripheral vision, so he wasn’t about to lower his guard.

“I didn’t try to eat _you_ , I wanted your cows. We have to eat something, you know.”

“Eat in the forest! There are lots of animals here! Your attacks are killing people!”

“I didn’t kill anyone! I didn’t even kill any of the knights they sent after me-”

“Lies! I know what cities look like after a dragon attack!” Lance claimed, his voice almost shrill now. The dragon’s eyes narrowed, although he couldn’t tell whether it was out of discomfort or anger.

“As I said before, I _wasn’t_ attacking the village. I just needed some food, you people keep hunting in the forest and don’t leave nearly enough for all of us!”

“So what? So you’re resorting to eating people then?!”

“ _I don’t eat people!”_ the dragon shouted and lifted its head to it closer to him. Lance could feel his knees beginning to shake but he wouldn’t back down. If the dragon was speaking the truth - and that was a big, fat _if_ \- then it wouldn’t kill him. And if it wasn’t speaking the truth, then it wouldn’t matter what Lance would do anyway. It was just a matter of whether he would keep his dignity before his death or not.

So far, he had to admit, the dragon’s story seemed quite plausible in itself though. If, you know, it wasn't for the whole part that it was a dragon.

“I don’t eat people, how often do I have to say this?! I wasn’t attacking the villagers. The only one that might have gotten hurt was the guy with the pitchfork that tried to keep me from eating the cows-”

“-which you had no right to eat anyway! They were the villager’s cows, they are all gonna die now thanks to you taking away their food source-”

“You are doing the exact same thing! Do you expect me to just sit around and starve or what?!”

Lance kept quiet. Slowly, he lowered his sword but didn’t once take his eyes off the dragon. “So you think that was an okay thing to do?”

The dragon let out a huff, followed by smoke coming out of its nostrils. “You’ve never gone hungry in your life, have you?” Despite its deep and rough voice, the words sounded weirdly soft.

And Lance? Well, Lance was stumped. The dragon seemed so _human_ , there was no way he could kill it now. It came from its expressions, from its behavior, from how it refused to kill him, from how it lay on the ground, defeated and belly exposed. Hell, the thing could talk, which wasn’t anything unusual for dragons, but it sure threw Lance for a loop. He had never talked to a dragon before. Were dragons known to trick humans when in danger? He wouldn’t know, this was the first time meeting one.

“So, what now?” Lance asked, still tense. The dragon scrutinized him for a little longer, then it breathed out and closed its eyes.

“Dunno. I guess I’ll sleep some.”

“You’ll _sleep_?!” At Lance’s incredulous tone, the dragon opened one eye again.

“Yeah. Do me a favor and kill me while I’m asleep if you have to, that’ll probably hurt less.”

“I- I wouldn’t kill you!” Lance spluttered.

“Oh?” The corners of the dragon’s mouth were turned up as if it was amused. “Cool. Thanks, I guess.”

“You- _thanks_?! Dude, I can’t even begin to explain how many things are wrong with that! Are you seriously gonna fall asleep now?!”

“I’m tired,” the dragon said, his mouth drooping again. “Everything hurts. I haven’t been able to sleep properly since Sir Shirogane was sent out to kill me.”

Lance gaped a little at the huge, scaly monster that had just addressed Shiro by name. “You know Shiro?!”

The dragon’s face contorted a little, then it smoothed out again. Lance wished he was better at reading its expressions, he just couldn’t get a handle on the thing. Everything in him screamed that something was off about the situation but it wasn’t as if he could set it right again. The dragon had spared his life two times in a row, insisted that it didn’t kill humans and addressed people with their names. Where did that put him? What was he supposed to do with it?!

“...you could say that. I doubt he remembers me,” the dragon said quietly and next thing Lance knew it had fallen asleep. Just to be sure he poked its leg - no reaction - before letting himself fall back against a boulder, eyes wide. His mind was reeling. What the fuck?

 

* * *

 

Lance left the dragon. For a while, that was. He had just managed to pack up all his belongings and set out to search for Kaltenecker when his own curiosity had drawn him back to the animal. He couldn’t help it; the whole thing was just too weird to be left alone. Hunk would have told him to come back home right this instant, to escape while he still had the chance, but Lance had never listened to him anyway. Not in that regard, at least. He was overly cautious and couldn’t see how important it was to find out what set this particular dragon apart from other dragons.

So back to the big, bad lizard it was.

For hours Lance just sat propped up against a boulder, sword by his side, picking at the tiny rocks around him. He had inspected his arm where the fire had singed his shirt but other than a little irritated skin he was unharmed.

Completely unharmed. He had spoken to a dragon, had even gotten attacked by it and was completely unharmed. Honestly, it sounded all kinds of wrong. If he told anyone they would assume that he was lying straight through his teeth, that much was for sure.

The sun was just grazing the horizon when the dragon stirred again. Lance had been busy getting some food into himself but he quickly shoved it aside and gripped his sword again, scrambling to his feet. Slowly, the dragon blinked at him as if it was still in the process of waking up.

“You’re still here,” it stated then.

“Still here, in all my glory,” Lance affirmed. The dragon shifted around a bit and made a deep noise that he struggled to interpret. Waiting for the animal to settle down again, Lance fumbled with his sword.

Finally, as if it had given up on whatever it had wanted to do, the dragon laid its yellow eyes back on Lance. “What do you want?”

“Honestly, I’m not really sure about that.” Shrugging, Lance scratched his neck. “I guess I’m just trying to figure out why you’re so… different.”

“...different how?”

“Different like you’re not jumping at the opportunity to feast on me.”

The dragon gave a tired sigh and closed its eyes again. “How often do I have to tell you that not all of us do that?”

“So what? You’re saying that there are others like you?” Supposing that he really didn’t need it anymore, Lance let his sword drop to the ground. It got the dragon to curiously open one eye but it shut it again when it saw that Lance simply was unarmed now.

“Well… maybe not exactly like me,” the dragon admitted after a beat of silence. “But they’re similar enough. There are others that wouldn’t even think of eating humans.”

“Then how come I’ve never heard of them, huh?!”

Smoke came out of the dragon’s nostrils as it exhaled frustratedly. Lance resisted the urge to take a step back and defensively crossed his arms over his chest instead. It was a valid question, the dragon had no reason to act all huffy and annoyed.

“Because they like to keep to themselves? This might come as news to you but your people are having a great time murdering us on sight.”

“That’s not true! You are the ones doing the-”

“Would you shut up about that already!” the dragon snapped. Lance’s eyes widened as it raised its head and brought it closer to him. “You keep asking me the same question over and over and yet you never listen to my answer. Some of us eat humans. Some of us don’t. Most of us aren’t out to personally make your lives a living hell, we just need food. Food that is getting increasingly hard to come by as you spread out your cities and hunt in the forest!”

Pursing his lips, Lance sat down and crossed his legs. “So, like… if we stopped doing that you would stop attacking villages? That’s all it takes?”

The drawn-out silence before the dragon replied was an answer in and of itself. “Well. Not quite.” It put its head on the ground again and gave Lance a tired look. “I just - there would probably be fewer attacks. I, for one, wouldn’t be forced to go hunt for your cows anymore. But there’s also the fact that the Galra-” Cutting itself off, the dragon looked away. “There are some of us that are just plain cruel. Staying out of the forest isn’t going to change that.”

Frowning to himself, Lance tapped his fingers on his knees. “So, wait. There are good and bad dragons out there? Did I get that right?”

The dragon’s mouth twitched. “Kinda.”

“And you’re one of the good ones.”

“I’d like to think so, yeah.”

Well. Huh. Turns out the whole thing wasn’t half as complicated as expected. Leaning back a little, Lance gave up the rest of his defensive posture and stretched himself.

“Alright. That’s cool. How can I tell if a dragon is evil or not?”

As if the question had made it uncomfortable, the dragon let out an undefinable noise. “There’s no- I mean, you can’t really tell. The Galra mostly live on the other side of the mountain and we keep them from crossing over, but sometimes they get through. It’s because we all look the same, kind of. I’m smaller than most but other than that…”

Cocking his head to the side, Lance gave the dragon a once over. “Why?”

“What why?”

“Why are you smaller than the others? Are you still a kid or something?”

Unexpectedly, the dragon gave him a wary look. “No,” it said then. “Just because of… reasons.” No explanation followed. Lance was about to complain but then figured that he didn’t actually have the right to do so. The dragon owed him nothing and the same was true the other way around.

Maybe he could ask other questions though. “So, then, how do you know Shiro’s name?”

The dragon’s eyes momentarily flickered up to Lance’s, then to the right, then to the left. “It’s, uh… because the other knights called him that?”

“Is that a question or an answer?”

“An answer.”

Lance bit his tongue to avoid accusing it of lying. It was probable that the other knights called out to Shiro in the middle of a battle, after all, so it wasn't necessarily a lie. There was definitely something more to it though and he would be damned if he didn’t find out what it was.

 

* * *

 

“Shouldn’t you be heading home now?” the dragon asked Lance. Lance had wrapped himself up in the rags he had used to disguise the clinking of his armor. They didn’t really smell all that good but goddamn it got cold at night near the mountains. The wind was brutal.

“Shouldn’t _you_ be heading home now?” he bit back. The dragon gave him an unamused look.

“I’m not the one freezing to death. Besides, we don’t really have homes like humans do.”

Lance blinked and looked up from where he had buried his face in his knees. “What do you mean?”

“We don’t have ‘homes’. We like to spend the winters in caves but even those caves vary from year to year. It’s just a spot we choose to escape from the cold.”

Lance gaped. He honestly couldn’t imagine not having a home to return to. In an attempt to show his incredulity he threw his arms out, just to tuck them back in again immediately when the cold night air seeped through his clothes. “Then how do you get in contact with others? What about your family? Please don’t tell me you don’t have families either, there’s only so much sadness I can handle in one day.”

The dragon let out a hot puff of air that almost had Lance leaning forward in an attempt to preserve the warmth. “You don’t even like us. Why would that upset you?”

Lance scoffed. “Listen up, _Red_. Just because I don’t like you overgrown scaly killing machines it doesn’t mean that I can’t feel empathy for you. Your lives have to be lonely as fuck. Maybe that’s why you’re so evil, there has never been anyone to teach you right from wrong.”

Much to Lance’s surprise, the dragon didn’t protest this time. Shivering a little, he went over his words again. Maybe he had hit bull’s eye with them. This dragon seemed way more human than the stories told, after all - maybe it really was lonely. Lance was probably the first person it had talked to in a few years. Or ever, depending on how old it was.

“...it’s Keith,” the dragon suddenly piped up again. Lance made a confused noise and the dragon self-consciously turned his head to the side. “My name. It’s not Red. It’s Keith.”

Blinking a few times, Lance stared at the animal. It was almost surreal. The dragon was huge, it could probably crush Lance with one of its legs alone. He still remembered from earlier how rough its scales were, if he rubbed against them in the wrong way they could tear his skin open. There was also the huge tail that could smash boulders without problems and a head as big as Lance himself that could spew fire. And despite all that, he didn’t feel threatened anymore.

“Cool. The name’s Lance,” he managed to say once he shook himself out of his thoughts. He thought the dragon smiled a little, but that might have just been his imagination.

 

* * *

 

“Lance.”

Shivering, Lance pulled his legs up and pressed more against the stone at his back. He was full of regrets. He shouldn’t have come back for the dragon. He should have searched for Kaltenecker and made his way home, then he would be in a nice, warm bed now. No rubble digging into his side. No wind tearing at the patchy blanket he had tried to make out of the rags.

“Lance,” Keith repeated. “I know that you’re awake.”

Groaning, Lance turned around. He instantly regretted it when the wind brushed over his left side that had just started warming up.

Glowing, yellow eyes met him. A part of him freaked out a little but the bigger part was fascinated by it. If it wasn’t so unnatural, he would have said that it was pretty. But those were dragon eyes and they didn't have pupils, and so were just really scary.

Not that he had enough energy left to be scared. He was too busy shivering and cursing himself to complain to Keith about his eyes.

“What?” he croaked out. It sounded more annoyed than anything else - which was good, he wouldn’t want to sound as weak as he felt. Keith narrowed his eyes at him.

“You are freezing.”

“No shit. What gave it away? The blue lips and fingers? The nonstop shivering?”

“You should go home.”

At that, Lance let out a laugh. It jostled the rags a bit and he immediately felt cold air entering his clothes. Goosebumps raised on his skin and he tightened his arms around himself. “An excellent idea. Send me home through the forest when I can’t see in the dark and don’t know where I’m going. Not to mention that it would probably take me hours without my horse, even if I could see.”

Keith didn’t say anything so Lance closed his eyes again. Falling asleep had never been so hard. He definitely was tired, that wasn’t the problem here. Rubbing his cold nose, he breathed warm air into his hands. Maybe he could make himself drowsy if he just kept thinking of his bed. Yeah, he was at home, everything was fine, there were no strange dragons five feet away from him and soft linen covered him-

Something touched the back of his head and Lance screamed. Scrambling to get up, he saw that it was Keith’s tail that had curled towards him. Now shivering and wide awake, Lance pointed at the dragon.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” 

“Helping you. You’re gonna get sick,” Keith replied in an even voice. His eyes hadn’t changed at all, he was calmly looking up at Lance as if he had just stated the most obvious thing in the world.

“Helping me through what? Scaring me to death?!” he shrieked. “Do you know what lives in these mountains?! That could have been a serious attack! Don’t do that!”

For a moment, there was nothing but silence. Then the dragon’s head dropped to the side and a deep rumbling sound came out of it. Lance stood in front of it, shivering relentlessly and wiping his runny nose as he watched the glimmer of fire deep inside Keith’s throat.

It took his sleep-deprived mind a few seconds to realize that the dragon was laughing.

“You- don’t you dare laugh at me! This is not funny!” But Keith just kept laughing, making Lance feel even stupider than before. He was also pretty sure that half of his rags had been scattered by the wind. Great. Just great.

Finally, Keith calmed down again. His eyes sought Lance out again and he gave another amused rumble before he tapped his tail against Lance’s feet. Almost unwittingly he jumped again, glaring at Keith to make sure that he wouldn’t start laughing again.

He didn’t. Instead, he cocked his head to the side and tapped him again.

“Oh my fucking- would you just stop it!” Lance exclaimed and tried to step on the tail next time it came close. Unfortunately, Keith was faster than him and pulled it away, leaving him to stomp on a small stone. Cursing, Lance kicked it away and glared at him. “What do you want?!”

“Come here,” Keith said. Lance froze and looked at him with raised eyebrows.

“Dude. I’m not gonna let you eat me.”

“How often do I have to- I’m not gonna eat you, Lance! You’re gonna get sick if you stay like this, let me help you.”

“By roasting me?! Yeah, no, I appreciate the offer but I'll have to decline,” he snorted, rubbing his arms to warm himself up. The goosebumps just wouldn’t go away anymore. Lance _hated_ the cold.

“You are really annoying, do you realize that?” the dragon asked him. The mix of his honest and disgruntled tone made Lance turn his nose up.

“ _You’re_ annoying! I’m a delight, mister I-don’t-know-when-to-stop-poking-people-with-my-mountain-smashing-tail.”

Instead of gracing him with a response, Keith suddenly lifted his tail and smacked it against the hollow of Lance’s knees. With a yelp he fell towards the ground, only to be met by the tail again. Throwing his arms around it, Lance held on tightly as Keith curled it towards his body. There was a brief moment of panic at the realization that fuck, the dragon was actually bringing him closer to it - but then the tail gently pressed him against the dragon’s stomach and stayed there, not doing anything. It took Lance a few moments to regain his wits.

“What- what did you just do, why did you-”

“Go to sleep, Lance,” Keith said, not even looking into his direction.

“You just kidnapped me! How am I supposed to sleep like this, huh?!”

But Keith didn’t answer. Slowly, Lance’s heart rate calmed down again. He couldn’t deny that his new spot between the dragon’s belly and its tail was _a lot_ warmer than the mountain, but it was weird. Was he supposed to sleep with a dragon? Did this count as cuddling already? Was he cuddle-buddies with a dragon? What was he doing?!

Keith, thought Lance, was definitely weird.

 

* * *

 

When the next morning came, Lance decided to head back home. Keith wouldn’t answer his questions about Shiro and the food he had brought with himself was pretty much all used up, there would be no use staying any longer. The people at the castle probably missed him already.

“Alright. I’ll be off then,” Lance said. The atmosphere between them was awkward, _really_ awkward - how were you supposed to tell your dragon cuddle-buddy goodbye? Coran had taught him many things, but never anything quite like this.

“Yeah. Good luck,” Keith offered. He was still lying on the ground, seemingly bored. Lance readjusted his grip on the armor and winced.

“Damn, this is heavy. I really hope that I’ll find my horse fast.”

“I think it went west,” Keith said. Admittedly a little surprised, Lance raised his eyebrows.

“How do you know?”

“I don’t. That’s just where it ran off to yesterday.”

Lance groaned and dropped his bags, hiding his face behind his hands. “For real?! It’s gonna take me, like, half the day to find Kaltenecker! My arms are gonna fall off!”

Keith huffed amusedly, making a few lonely swirls of smoke rise from his nostrils. “Has to be tough being you, little soldier.”

“I’ll have you know that I am the-” Halting in the middle of his sentence, Lance snapped his mouth shut. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to tell the dragon beast who he really was. Keith seemed friendly for now, but who knows what would happen if he knew that Lance could one day be in charge of the kingdom. 

“The?” Keith asked amusedly.

“The best soldier of my age group, that’s what!” he claimed instead. Keith dropped his head to the ground, eyes wide and doubtful.

“Think you’re gonna keep that title after letting the dragon get away?”

“You- just-” Spluttering, Lance turned around. “Screw you! I’m gonna leave now, I don’t care about your petty insults.”

“What about your armor?”

Safe with the knowledge that Keith couldn’t see his face, Lance smiled to himself. He made a dismissive hand motion over his shoulder and marched on.

“Would slow me down too much. I’ll come back to get it in a few days!”

 

* * *

 

Lance’s estimate of how long it would take him to find Kaltenecker wasn’t exaggerated at all. His throat had been hoarse from shouting her name when she finally burst out between two bushes, obviously happy to see him. He felt kind of bad for abandoning her for a day and he was honestly just glad that she came back at all - she wasn’t his usual horse, after all.

But as it seemed, good things were bound to happen to him today. Kaltenecker came back, he found the road back to the castle soon enough and got himself an apple from one of the merchants with the huge carts. Despite the pain in his bones from having slept in an uncomfortable position, Lance was in a good mood.

And then the guard posts in front of the gates recognized him.

All of a sudden, things blurred together. They freaked out and pulled him aside, immediately dragging him back to the castle. Apparently, the king had sent out troops to search for him, especially after Hunk told him what Lance had been talking about two days ago.

Great. Just great. His good mood was gone now, thank you very much.

In the end, it wasn’t as bad as he had expected. He was grounded for a week and there were a lot more guards in front of his door, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t get past if he wanted to. His denial of having seen a dragon seemed to have paid off in that regard.

Unfortunately, not everyone was fooled as easily as the king. Pidge just needed one look at his sleeve before she caught on that there was a lot more to his story than he let on.

“So, what’s that?” she asked, unsubtly nodding towards his arm as they made their way back to his room. Lance tensed and concealed the sleeve beneath his hand.

“Heh, I kinda messed the fire up. It gets cold at night so I tried to make fire but you know how bad I am at that.”

She had raised one eyebrow in suspicion but hadn’t added anything else.

“Alright, if you say so…”

 

* * *

 

Two nights later, Lance snuck out again. He didn’t bring any armor this time, just some food and money to bribe the stable hand to get him one of the younger horses and an old cape. Despite the guards having been told to watch out for him, getting past the gate was just as easy as last time. It was a confidence boost and Lance kept smirking to himself all the way towards the forest.

Only when he actually entered it, he realized that he wasn’t quite sure where he had met Keith last time. It was at the edge of the Great Mountain, but where?! The mountain didn’t have its name for naught, it was huge!

After two hours of riding east, Lance let the horse take a small break and had an early lunch. He was wracking his brain about any special landmarks he had seen while he was with Keith, but the memory of a gigantic, red dragon made everything else appear blurry.

It was half an hour later that his horse suddenly began to get nervous. His ears got all twitchy and he slowed down, obviously very reluctant to advance any further. Excitement bubbled up in Lance when he recognized the behavior as similar to that of Kaltenecker, there was something near that the horse was afraid of. Something big. Something like a dragon. Something like _Keith_.

Tying the horse to a nearby tree, Lance climbed over a few rocks to advance further. He didn’t have to climb for long before he spied something red on the ground, making him feel a rush of excitement. Keith was still here!

Cupping his hands around his mouth, Lance shouted. “Keith! Get up, lazy ass, you have guests to greet!”

There was a deep rumble and the red scales shifted slowly until the edge of a horn peaked out over a bigger rock formation. “Lance?”

“I really hope you took care of my armor, I’ll take it personally if you threw it away! It’s extra shiny and very well kept, it would probably take the smith a week to replicate it!”

“Is that so?” The horn disappeared again and Lance grinned. He jumped over another two rocks when he heard a horrifically loud crash of what was undeniably metal on stone. “Oops.”

“ _Keith!”_ he screeched. What had that asshole done to his armor?! Lance almost face planted directly into the stones three times, only catching himself on time through excessive windmilling of his arms. When he finally reached the ground, he glowered at the smug looking dragon and pointed an accusing finger at him. “What did you just do?!”

Keith subtly turned his head towards the left. “I just wanted to bring you your armor. Something must have gone wrong.”

“Something?! You did that on purpose!”

“Not my fault if you can’t tie your bags closed properly.”

“Can so! I bet you just ripped a hole into it with your brute claws!”

 

* * *

 

Honestly, Lance didn’t know what he was doing anymore.

He had come to visit Keith just to get his armor back, right? So why did he sit down to talk to him for two hours straight? Noon had come and gone now and he would have to head back soon if he wanted to make it back to the castle before nightfall.

Seriously, what was he doing? Was he becoming friends with a dragon? Was that even legal?!

It was at a lull in their conversation that Keith asked the dreaded question. “What are you doing here, Lance?”

And, true to Lance’s nature, he played it off. “The question is, what are _you_ doing here? You don’t look like you’ve moved at all during the past three days,” he said, scoffing a little. Then he blinked. Keith really didn’t look like he had moved a single inch from where he had last seen him.

Keith’s eyes widened a little and he turned his head away. “It’s not like I’ve anywhere else to go. No homes, remember?”

Frowning a little, Lance threw a pebble at him. “That doesn’t explain how you didn’t even move. Seriously, doesn’t that get uncomfortable?”

“We can stay in the same position for days on end, if we want to. That’s not the problem,” Keith said evenly. Lance, however, grinned in triumph.

“Aha! So there _is_ a problem! I knew it! Tell me.”

Keith glared at him and threateningly widened his nostrils but immediately relaxed them again when he realized how Lance’s posture grew tenser in response. His dragon friend was a huge softie, Lance thought not without amusement. It was ridiculous. Had Shiro seriously fought against this creature?

Shiro had fought against him.

Dread clashed over Lance when he realized what the problem was. “Wait, are you- are you hurt? Can you move? There was a cut on your right, I remember that. How does it look like?”

Keith seemed startled at first, then he narrowed his eyes and turned his head away. Lance wasn’t sure what that action was supposed to tell him but he took it as his cue to walk around the dragon and squint at its side. Not that he could see much - Keith hadn’t made any effort to move, hiding the entire wound beneath him. Which probably wasn’t a good idea, considering that the stones weren’t clean and no air could touch them like this.

“Come on, turn around. Let me take a look at it.”

“I’m fine,” Keith said tersely. Lance was unconvinced but wasn’t too keen on prodding at a dragon’s body. He was ninety-nine percent sure that Keith wouldn’t hurt him, but all the damage dragons had done was still deeply engraved into his mind.

“Cool. Then you shouldn’t have any problems with showing me your side, right?”

A growl rose from Keith’s chest and he twisted his head around at an impossible angle to glare at Lance. Lance just quirked an eyebrow in response and put his hands on his hips.

“Not impressed. You already wasted your chances at intimidating me yesterday, Sir man-eating lizard.”

“I am not going to eat you! When are you going to get that through your stupid little brain?!”

“ _You_ have a stupid little brain!” Lance exclaimed and waved his hands around. “You’re injured! You’re refusing help! Come on, at least let me look at it!”

“Why would I accept your help?” Keith asked. Lance rolled his eyes so hard that they started to hurt.

“Dude. I’m not going to hurt you. We’re cuddle-buddies, pretty much besties when we’re looking back on dragon-human related history. Now stop being difficult and move.”

For a moment there was nothing but silence and Lance wondered whether he had crossed an unspoken line. But then Keith shifted, slowly and carefully turning his body over. He didn’t make any sound but Lance figured that the motion must have been painful, if the choppiness of his movements was any indication.

When the wound finally surfaced, Lance’s face contorted in horror. There was a singular, deep gash reaching almost all the way from Keith’s foreleg to his hind leg, only halfway crusted over. The red scales disguised most of the blood but Lance just needed to take one look at the ground to conclude that it must have bled horribly - and the wound was what? Five days old already? It was bad news, that’s what it was.

“Fucking shit, Keith,” he breathed out and moved closer, as if he wanted to touch it. He didn’t dare to do that though; he didn’t want to cause Keith any pain. There were lots of small stones and dirt in the wound and Lance discovered another, smaller gash a few inches beneath the big one. Snapping his head away from the bloodied scales, he burned his eyes into Keith’s. “Were you planning to just leave it like that?!”

Keith lowered his head to the ground and closed his eyes. “Dunno. Guess so. Our wounds rarely get infected like human wounds do, so I just have to stay still for a while and let it heal.”

“ _Rarely_ doesn’t mean _never!_ Don’t you guys have some fancy dragon-medicine around here?!”

An amused huff escaped Keith, as if Lance’s words had been funny somehow. “That doesn’t exist. I’m telling you, it’ll be fine. I just have to-”

“-clean it, that’s what you have to do. I don’t know whether you’ve even looked at it once but it doesn’t look so great.”

“Leave it, Lance-”

“Oh no. No, no, no, no, nope. Get up and go to the stream, it’s just down there.”

“But-”

“Nope. Not listening to the dragon that thought that sleeping on your slash wound for three days on end was a good idea.” Lance pointedly looked at Keith until the dragon finally grumbled something and made an effort to heave himself onto his feet. From the way he was holding himself it was clear that he was in pain and Lance resolved to get this over and done with as fast as possible.

When Keith finally stood on all four legs, he nodded with vigor. “Great. Now, onwards. It’s not that far, come on.”

 

* * *

 

Lance managed to clean the wound with the rags from the bag in his armor. It was an experience, to say the least. Keith barely felt it if Lance pressed against the scales surrounding the wound, that’s how thick a dragon’s scales were, but as soon as he made contact with the open flesh he stiffened in obvious discomfort. When it came to digging out the stones, Keith actually burned a tree with the pained exhale he made. Lance lived in constant fear that the tail would swivel around and smash him to Lance-flavored purée, but luck was on his side. Apart from bloody hands - Keith’s blood, not his - he didn’t suffer at all.

Once he had cleaned out the wound, Keith had dropped his head to the ground, obviously exhausted. Lance had taken that time to inspect the gashes more closely and concluded that he still wasn’t satisfied with it. That’s how he left Keith, promising to return tomorrow and bring some medicine. Sure, he was a dragon and all, but some basic anti-inflammatory stuff should do the trick no matter if he was human or not, right?

When Lance approached the gate, the guard posts were already expecting him. They were obviously pissed off beyond measure and with a sinking feeling, he realized that he wouldn’t get off as easily as last time. Damn it all. And just now when Keith needed his help.

Oblivious to his internal conflict, the guards escorted him to the king’s personal chambers and instructed him to wait there. Lance had just resigned himself for another three hours wait until the king would find enough time to visit him, when there was a knock on the door. Perking up, he straightened on the chair he had chosen to occupy. “Yeah?”

“It’s me,” Princess Allura’s voice sounded through the door. Lance winced and slouched back into the chair. It wasn’t that he didn’t get along with his cousin - it was just that she was a lot more easily angered than her father and she could be truly terrifying if she wanted to.

“Come in, come in. These aren’t my quarters anyway,” he called back. The door opened immediately and revealed Allura in all her beauty. Giving her a weak smile, Lance waved. “Hey there, gorgeous. Long time no see.”

Allura frowned and closed the door behind her. “Cut the crap, Lance. Where were you today?”

“Just… out? I came across a lot of cool merchant wagons when I was on that trip yesterday.”

“You were grounded,” she said, crossing her arms. Thinking fast, Lance shrugged.

“Yeah, well, I heard that they wanted to leave today. And I couldn’t let them leave without having a look at the merchandise, you know? There was some pretty cool stuff, I even saw a sparkling dress that you would have-”

“ _Lance_.” Uh-oh. “What made you think that some merchandise was enough to go against my father’s direct orders? You didn’t even take a guard with you!” Shrinking in on himself, he winced a little. Allura sure had a way of making others feel small, if she wanted to. “Sir Shiro just came back from a dragon sighting, you can’t just go and do as you please! Your life is not a joke!”

Well, Keith’s life was not a joke either. The thought of his dragon friend in pain had Lance sitting up again. “Hey, relax, it’s not like I was out looking for dragons.” _Lies_. “Shiro said that injured dragons were even more dangerous than not injured ones and I quite value my life, thank you very much. It would be a tragedy if the world was deprived of this face just because-”

“Lance!”

“Allura,” he interrupted her, just a tick softer than she had. “I am safe. I’m not gonna do the same thing as my father or your mother did. I know of the dangers out there. I wouldn’t do anything stupid. You know me; I’ve been sneaking out since the moment I arrived at court. I am nineteen years old now, you can’t just keep locking me in anymore. A man is supposed to make his own decisions, right?”

Allura’s aggressive posture deflated just the tiniest bit. “I get that. I get it, but-”

A firm knock interrupted her and both of their heads turned towards the door. “Yes?” Lance asked confusedly.

“Prince Lance? It’s me. May I come in?”

Lance’s face brightened instantly. “Shiro! Yeah, sure, come in, come in. Allura’s here too!”

Shiro opened the door and respectfully bowed for both of them before entering and closing the door again. “Princess. Prince.”

“What brings you here?” Allura asked, sounding a bit put off. Probably because Shiro interrupted her angry tirade. Lance would have to make sure to give him a pay raise for that.

Shiro smiled vaguely. “Orders of the king. I’m to make sure that the Prince doesn’t run away again before he can deal with him.”

Lance let out a horrified noise and threw his head back. Fancy swirls and pictures stared down at him from the ceiling, completely unbothered by his problems. “This is stupid. I’m nineteen! Do you really have no trust in me at all?”

Silence. Somehow, that hurt. He lifted his head again and gave the two people in front of him a bitter smile.

“Sure. Just ignore me now.”

“Lance-” Shiro began, but Lance cut him off again.

“Nope. Nu-uh, I’ve had enough of that. I told you guys that I know what I’m doing and you don’t believe me. You never do. I could probably defeat all of my guards in a fair fight and yet you insist on them accompanying me everywhere. And why is that? Because I went out to visit the village the dragon attacked.” Okay, that was a lie but the general sentiment still stood. “No problems, no injuries, no deaths. Everything was just fine.”

“This isn’t about a lack of trust, Lance,” Allura sighed. “We are just worried about you.” When Shiro nodded in support, Lance couldn’t take it anymore. Standing up, he raised his chin and looked at the two people he most admired.

“No, it is, actually. Do you want to know why?” Not giving them a chance to answer, he continued on. “I am the backup prince. People care about me just enough to observe me every minute of my life, but not enough to actually listen to my words. I am not as smart as you, Allura. I like making jokes and I like having fun. I like a little adventure - but none of that means that I am incapable of handling myself. I know my limits, even if no one else here seems to recognize them.”

Silence descended over the room. For a split second, Lance felt some regrets, but he brushed them aside. It was about time that he had had this conversation with someone. After all, these feelings were what had made him first go after Keith.

“We - that is not true, we do trust you,” Allura protested. “We are worried about you! You always seem to get yourself in trouble and you know what happened to your father-”

“How often are you going to bring him up today?” he asked. It wasn’t an accusation, it was more tired than anything else. He hated serious discussions and he hated thinking about the family he lost. But Lance was Lance and he had always been proud that he didn’t shy away from things that had to be said, even if he sometimes waited to address them until the last second. “I loved my father, Allura. I really did. You know that. But I know him and he knew me - he would never have locked me away just to keep me safe.”

Shiro, Lance noticed, had taken a few respectful steps back. He offered him a thankful grin before returning his attention to Allura, who looked at him with wide eyes. “There is more to me than the stupid kid that takes all the books in the library to a different place to make sure that no one can give me homework. I won’t say that I am without my faults but I am capable of more than you trust me with.”

Slowly, Allura’s shoulders dropped down. Her frown softened a bit as she looked at the ground, taking his words into careful consideration. He gave her time to sort her thoughts and quietly stood next to his chair. The way her posture straightened again after a few minutes told him that she had made a decision.

“You have to understand that all of us are just worried about you,” she began. “You do the stupidest things at the most unfortunate times and I really don’t want to lose another member of my family.” Then she took a deep breath, locking eyes with him. “That aside, I can see that we might have been a little… overly protective. You _are_ an adult and you should be allowed to make your own decisions. It was never our intention to make you feel like we didn’t trust you.”

Smiling softly, Lance gave a lazy shrug. “I know. I never blamed you.” Allura returned his smile and pulled him into a quick hug.

“I will talk to father,” she whispered into his ear. His heart swelled with affection and he squeezed her a little tighter.

“Thanks. You’re the best not-quite sister ever.”

 

* * *

 

Allura kept her promise.

The king hadn’t even met him and Lance was let out of his chambers again, suddenly free to do whatever he wanted. That certainly wasn’t what he had expected to be met with upon his return, but he couldn’t say that it wasn’t amazing. His chest was full of love for the family he had made here and he had never been gladder that he had confronted Allura about something.

But now wasn’t the time to marvel about his newfound freedom. He was a man on a mission; he had to find Hunk as soon as possible.

Hastening over to the library where - according to the guards, at least - he and Pidge were hanging out, Lance threw the doors open.

“Hunk! Hunk, buddy, where are you?! I need you to do me a favor!” The librarian glared at his loud volume but Lance was unconcerned. Even if he was the backup prince, he was still a prince. A prince that just got his freedom back, no less. He could be loud if he wanted to.

“Lance? Is that you?” A faint voice called out from the back. Grinning, Lance took off towards the back rows. And sure enough, there they were, huddled around a book with impossibly tiny letters.

“Ew. You really gonna read all that?” he asked, making a face at the book. Pidge rolled her eyes, closing it and placing her hand on the cover.

“Some of us like informing themselves about stuff that concerns our daily lives.”

“Oh yeah? Like-” Lance craned his head to get a clear visual of the title. “-like _spyglasses_? I don’t see how-”

“Okay, time out, I think Lance said something about a favor and I really want to get this over with before I agree to something that we didn’t talk about,” Hunk interrupted them. Letting out an offended gasp, Lance placed his hands on his chest.

“I would never!”

“Uh, what about that time you roped us into sneaking into the kitchen at night?”

“Or what about that time you made us hide Allura’s new dress without telling us what it was because you were pissed at her?” Pidge chimed in. Hunk nodded furiously and tapped his fingers on the table.

“Yeah, or what about that time you made us promise to help you carry something and that something turned out to be that one guard that you knocked out while you-”

“Okay!” Lance exclaimed, cutting his friends off. “Okay, I will admit that I did some of these things but that’s all in the past. I learn from my mistakes, you know. I’m incredible like that. So I’ll tell you right now what I need from you.”

Hunk sighed and dropped his shoulders. “Oh boy, here we go.”

“You have to sneak me some anti-inflammatory stuff from Shay’s. And bandages. Lots of bandages. And pain medi- no, on second thought, there is no pain medication needed.”

It was only when Pidge and Hunk exchanged a wide-eyed look that Lance realized that maybe he should have thought of a backstory for that particular favor.

 

* * *

 

He got the stuff. Lance made up one bullshit excuse after another, leaving both of his friends pissed at him for not telling the truth. But he got the stuff and that’s really all that counted.

As soon as possible, Lance set out to leave the city again. He was able to take Blue this time and no one tried to stop him. He even said goodbye to Allura and made up some story about visiting one of the smaller villages near the forest and despite her looking extremely uncomfortable at the thought of him leaving on his own, she had accepted it. All in all the day started out just perfect.

When he found Keith, the day became a little less perfect. The dragon hadn’t moved since he had cleaned his wounds, quite obviously still in pain. In pain, but alive at least.

Lance had never known that a dragon could sound as happy as Keith did when he called out his name.

 

* * *

 

Have you ever tried to bandage a dragon who had gotten a gash over what was basically the length of his whole body? Here a hint: it was anything but easy.

“This is not even close to enough,” Lance complained as he laid out the bandages that Hunk had snuck him from the physician. Keith let out an amused huff and blinked rapidly.

“I could have told you that when they were still in the bag.”

“Shut up, you don’t get to pretend that you know what I’m talking about. You dragons probably don’t even _have_ anything that counts as bandages.” Taking Keith’s silence as an affirmation, Lance squinted at the stuff again. “Do you think we could get some ropes and hold them in place with that? I have a feeling that sticking them to you with water won’t work with your shiny mini daggers.”

“Shiny what?”

Lance smirked and knocked twice on Keith’s leg. “I was talking about your scales. Real evil stuff.” A low grumble escaped Keith but Lance was long past the point of being bothered by it. Instead, he stretched and pursed his lips at the dark flesh he saw. “Think we can just slap it on there and hope for the best? It’s not like you’re moving anyway, so it should work. Maybe we can tie some rocks to it so that they don’t fly off when the wind picks up.”

“Getting creative now, are we?”

“Shut it. I’d like to hear you make a better suggestion.”

Keith’s tail tapped the ground once and he put his head down. “I don’t need them. I told you, I just have to wait for them to close up. A little dirt doesn’t hurt the healing process, I will be fine.”

Giving Keith a hard glare, Lance crossed his arms. “And I already told you that the bandages are non-negotiable. I bet the wounds will heal faster if you take proper care of them.”

“They will fall off anyway if I move,” Keith said, shifting a little as if to prove a point. Too bad that the movement made him exhale a dark cloud of smoke, clearly paining him.

“Why would you move? You haven’t moved in, like, a week. Just stay put until you’re better.”

“And do what? Starve? Am I supposed to eat you now?”

Instinctively, Lance took a step backward. It wasn’t that he believed even for a second that Keith would make true on his threat, it was more… well. The fact that there still was a possibility that he _could_. In theory. Who knew how hungry injured dragons were after a week without food?

Clearing his throat, Lance tried to disguise how uncomfortable he suddenly was. “Ha, ha. Very funny. We might have to go with the ropes idea though if you really have to move… or I could bring you food?”

“I highly doubt that you’d be able to get me something big enough. We kind of need two whole cows at least.”

Two whole - what the fuck. Lance’s jaw fell open as he tried to comprehend how anyone could eat that much. Keith was so non-dragon-y most of the time that he sometimes forgot that he was still a full-fledged monster.

“Yeah. No. Don’t think I can do that.” Coughing a few times, Lance tried to get his facial expressions back under control. “Alright then. Ropes it is.”

“That’s a stupid idea. They will get out of place and do more harm than good - it’s fine like this, really.”

Lance wasn’t happy about it but there wasn’t much else he could do. Settling with simply covering Keith’s wounds with the white fabric, he got to work.

 

* * *

 

“Ke-eith!” Lance sing-songed as he made his way towards the boulders where he had last left him at. Keith had told him to come back two days later, apparently he had been serious about needing food. “Ke-eith, where are yoooouuu?”

“I heard you, you don’t have to-”

“Ke-eith!”

“Shut _up_! Do you want every dragon around here to hear you?!”

Lance grinned smugly as he made his way around the last huge rock and was greeted by the sight of Keith glaring at him. “Buddy, I’m pretty sure that your growling is already taking care of that. Besides, I haven’t met a single dragon around here yet. Apart from you, of course.”

Keith breathed out smoke in irritation, but Lance paid him no mind. Instead, he made his way over to Keith’s side to get a look at his wounds.

Not much had changed. They hadn’t gotten any bigger, which he took as a positive sign - he had been worried about Keith tearing them further while he was in the forest, hunting. Unfortunately, they hadn’t closed yet either, so that meant more cleaning and medical paste for Keith.

Half an hour later, Lance was finished with the wounds. Keith hadn’t been too happy about it and there was now a second burned tree right next to the other one. Grinning smugly, Lance nodded towards them. “You planning on burning the forest down?”

“If you didn’t insist on sticking your hand in my stomach we wouldn’t have that problem,” Keith bit back. Lance shook his finger at him.

“A-ah, none of that. First of all, it wasn’t your stomach. Second of all, I’m saving you from future suffering. You’re supposed to write love letters to my selfless personage.”

Silently, Keith lifted his foreleg and waved it in front of Lance’s face. His foot alone was bigger than Lance’s head and he was once again reminded of how easily Keith could kill him, if he really wanted to.

“That’s kinda hard to do when you can’t write.”

“You can carve letters into the ground with your claws. Oh! Or you could send me smoke signals, then I could see your appreciation all the way from the cas- _city_.”

If Keith thought his slip-up was weird, he didn’t mention it.

 

* * *

 

“You want me to do what?”

Lance rolled his eyes and put his hands on his hips. “You’re making it sound as if it was an unreasonable question. Go look for a cave, I’m not letting you stay out here until you’re all better.”

Narrowing his eyes at him, Keith tapped his tail on the ground. “I don’t need a cave. I’m-”

“-‘perfectly fine out here because I’m a strong and nearly invincible monster’, yeah, I’ve heard it all before.” Lance sighed and turned his back towards the dragon to pack the medicine up. “If you refuse your bandages, at least search for a place that makes it harder to get dirt into your wounds. I don’t like leaving you out here where the wind fucks up all my hard work two hours after I left.”

A low growl sounded from Keith’s chest, but by now Lance had learned to read the difference between nuances. This was a frustrated growl, not an ‘I want you for dinner’ growl. Keith was pissed because he knew Lance was right, because if what Keith had said was true then the wounds should have closed up by now. Unfortunately, there wasn't any difference between now and the day Lance had first brought some medicine.

“You barely do anything, I wouldn’t call it ‘hard work’-”

“Um, excuse me?” Lance gave him a pointed look. “It’s not exactly easy to smuggle out this much medicine without explanation. And then I have to carry it, clean the old stuff off, apply it anew-”

“All that is totally unnecessary!” All at once, Keith rolled onto his stomach and got to his feet. He towered over Lance but made sure to keep his head low so that he could look straight into his eyes. “I never asked you to bring all this! What if the medicine is the reason I’m still not healed?”

“It’s _medicine_.”

“Yeah, for _humans_.”

A beat of silence filled the air between them, then Lance threw his hands up. “Okay, fine! Don’t take the medicine anymore! But if your wounds get worse-”

“Just shut up,” Keith mumbled irritably. “We’ll go look for your cave, but no more medicine.”

“Fine.”

The only reason Lance agreed was that he was terrified that Keith might have been right. What if he was the reason his new friend was still in pain?

 

* * *

 

Whistling a happy tune, Lance made his way over the courtyard. After today Keith would need to hunt again, so Lance had no one to visit for two days. It left him with mixed feelings - weirdly enough, he loved spending time with Keith. He had no idea whether it was because of the danger and the unknown or if he just genuinely enjoyed his company, but he always had fun with him.

He also missed his other friends though. So there was that. Maybe this two days break was exactly what he needed right now.

Coming across Shiro with a rather large group of knights, he raised a hand in greeting. Then he did a double take: they were all walking around with crossbows, heading towards the stables. This didn’t seem like a guard mission. This seemed like-

Letting out a squeak, Lance dropped the empty bag that he had used to carry lunch with to the ground and hurried after them. “Shiro! Shiro, wait!”

Almost immediately, the older man halted. “Prince,” he greeted, bowing deeply. The knights around him followed his example, though not all of them bowed as much as he had. Honestly, Lance didn’t care either way - he already knew that they saw him as a nobody. He had gotten over the hurt years ago.

“Where are you guys going?” he asked, trying to conceal the nerves in his voice. If Shiro’s concerned look was anything to go by, he failed.

“A hunting trip. His Majesty is going to join us soon, we-”

“Don’t!” Lance exclaimed, making all knights freeze in place. Even Shiro blinked slowly, obviously having been taken by surprise.

“I’m sorry?”

“Don’t. Don’t do that. No more hunting trips in the forest.” Unhappy murmurs started up, but Lance didn’t back down. He locked eyes with Shiro and forced him to take him seriously. “No more hunting trips there.”

“The king organized this though,” one of the knights pointed out. Lance frowned and balled his hands into fists.

“I know. Still. Listen. We shouldn’t do any more hunting trips. It’s just- not a good idea.”

While more and more protests rose up amongst the knights, Shiro took a step closer to him. “Lance?” he asked carefully. Lance breathed in deeply and jerked his thumb towards the castle.

“Follow me to the king. I have to talk to him about this.”

Shiro was obviously surprised, but he wouldn’t dream of opposing such direct orders. Telling his fellow knights to wait until he returned with news, he followed Lance up the steps to the castle. “What is this about?”

Lance motioned for Shiro to come forward and walk next to him, rather than behind him. He appreciated the respect he always showed in front of an audience, but this was a private matter. “It’s about the dragons. I think that part of their attacks on the villages might happen because we’re hunting down their food sources in the forest.”

 

* * *

 

“-and that’s how I saved your ass,” Lance concluded his story. He crossed his arms behind his head and leaned back against the cave’s wall, grinning smugly at the dragon in front of him. “Isn’t that amazing? I know it is, no need to flatter me.”

“Don’t even pretend like you’re not getting anything out of it,” Keith answered. Despite his harsh words, his tone seemed rather playful.

“If you mean saving not only your ass but also those of countless innocent villagers, then yeah, I’m definitely getting something out of it. I’m a hero!”

“You’re annoying, that’s what you are,” Keith huffed. Lance’s grin widened.

“Annoyingly perfect.”

“Shut _up_.”

His chest felt full when he laughed at Keith’s exasperated tone. Well. He guessed he had found the answer to his question then. He had just genuinely missed Keith’s grumpy behavior.

 

* * *

 

Keith was asleep.

Slowly, Lance lowered his bag to the ground and approached the huge, red body in front of him. When he got close enough to touch it, he felt the heat radiating from the scales. Dragons ran incredibly hot, he still remembered that from the day he had first met Keith.

Tiptoeing his way around the head, Lance got closer to the wounds. In all honesty, they had gotten worse after they had stopped using medicine. A deep crease formed between his forehead as he carefully placed his hand on the swollen edges. He could feel Keith’s pulse there. That wasn’t normal, was it? He definitely couldn’t feel it if he touched his leg.

Cursing softly, Lance let his hand drop away. Of course the gashes had gotten infected. Of fucking course. He should never have listened to Keith, he should have continued with the treatment. How did you take care of a dragon’s infection? Anti-inflammatory medicine was one thing; treating infections was a whole other. No wonder Keith had rolled over to his right side the last few times Lance had visited him. The stubborn idiot had tried to hide how bad they had gotten.

“I fucking hate you, you asshole,” Lance whispered as he weakly punched Keith in the leg. The dragon didn’t even stir, he just kept breathing evenly. Curling up against his stomach, Lance snuggled against him. He would wait for Keith to wake up and discuss this with him, no more running away from this. They were friends now and he refused to let his friends die from something as stupid as an infection.

 

* * *

 

“Lance.”

Lance groaned and turned his head away from the noise.

“Lance.”

Oh man, his bed had gotten rather uncomfortable. Had someone exchanged his linen pillows for leather?

“ _Lance_.”

A hot gust of air passed over his face, mixed with the heady smell of smoke. Coughing, Lance shot up and threw his arms out. “What the fu-”

“Oh, good, you’re awake.”

“Awake?! You could say that, I nearly had a heart attack!” Rubbing his eyes, Lance squinted at the person in front of him. No, not person - dragon. Keith. Tired yellow eyes blinked at him and Lance idly noted that he had never been this close to Keith’s face before. If he lifted his arm, he could probably pet his nose.

“What are you doing here, Lance?”

“Checking on my stubborn dragon friend,” he mumbled. Keith didn’t move away, just narrowed his eyes a little further.

“I told you I’d be out hunting.”

“And you are the worst liar I’ve ever met in my whole life - you went hunting like two days ago.” Silence. On impulse, Lance extended his arm and patted Keith’s nose. It was warm and the scales seemed to be less thick here, sticking closely to the skin underneath and making it almost feel smooth. Keith seemed surprised but didn’t pull away. “Turns out that my hunch was correct, as always. You were totally hiding something.”

At that, Keith turned his head away. “It’s nothing.”

“That’s infected,” Lance said, pointing his head towards the wounds next to him.

“It’s not.”

Not in the mood to continue a pointless argument, Lance pressed his hand on the swelling. A flame burst out between Keith’s teeth, scorching part of the small cave. “Nope, that didn’t convince me.”

All of a sudden, Keith’s tail appeared in front of his face. “Hey, what are you-” Keith didn’t even listen, he just pushed him backwards until Lance stood plastered to the wall. He tried prying the tail off him, but to no avail. Letting go of it, he gave him a hard glare. “What was that for?!”

“Just leave it, okay?!” Keith hissed. “It’s nothing. It’s either gonna heal or not and you poking around at it isn’t gonna help.”

“I’m worried about you, you stupid idiot!” Lance shouted. He tried kicking the tail away from him but Keith didn’t even flinch. Stupid dragon skin. Stupid scales. Stupid sword wounds and stupid, idiotic, _stubborn_ -

“I appreciate that but there is nothing you can do to help me! When will you finally start listening to what I’m saying?!”

The words struck a chord with him. They were eerily similar to what he had told Allura a few weeks back - to start trusting him on the things that concerned him. For the first time, he really understood her side of the argument.

“I would listen to you if you didn’t talk about the gash as if it was your death sentence! You refuse to do anything about it but we barely even tried-”

“Shut it, Lance.” The venom in Keith’s voice was almost palpable and Lance snapped his mouth shut. Never before had he talked to him like this. “You don’t understand. This is not a death sentence and I am not going to die. I just don’t want your stupid medicine that did nothing but keep the wound open! What I need is food and-”

 _“Then let me help you!”_ Lance’s voice raised in pitch. “You got worse after I stopped the treatment! If you just allowed me to give you the medicine, you could go hunting again-”

“When will you get it through your thick skull that I am a _dragon_?!” Keith ripped his tail away from Lance and the lack of leverage almost made him fall to the ground. “A dragon’s body is different from a human’s! We recover through energy, for energy we need food, if I had managed to find a deer or two the last two times I went hunting-”

Lance’s brows furrowed. “Wait, you didn’t-”

“-then I would already be better! I don’t talk about the scratches as if they are a death sentence - I won’t die from this. I don’t- I just need food, I’m not gonna-”

“I’ll bring you food,” Lance cut in. Keith blinked a few times as if he wasn’t sure that he had heard correctly.

“You can’t just steal a cow and lead it through the mountains, Lance.” His voice was quiet and soft though, the protest barely there. Lance cursed himself for not listening to him earlier - Keith had always just talked about hunting. Maybe if he had listened earlier, they could have avoided the infection.

“No, I really can’t do that, but I can _buy_ a cow and lead it through the _forest_. You’re still well enough to get down there, right?”

Keith’s wide, yellow eyes met his. He looked confused and almost shocked, as if he hadn’t expected Lance to help him with this. It was almost as if-

 

“You can’t just buy me an entire cow, where are you gonna get that money from?!”

“Knighthood pays pretty well,” Lance lied smoothly. Keith still looked incredulous and ready to fight him, so Lance extended his arms and presented his open palms. A universal gesture of honesty, if there was one. “Look. We’re friends, alright? I’m not gonna let you die when a little money could save your life.”

 

-it was almost as if Keith has never had anyone care for him before.

 

* * *

 

A cow, a cow, a cow. Lance furrowed his brows as he hastened over the courtyard, heading towards the stables. Where could he find a cow? Preferably two? How much was a cow worth anyway? He didn’t know, he had never been in a situation where he needed to know that.

“Lance!”

Shaking himself out of his thoughts, Lance turned towards where Pidge and Hunk hurried down the stairs. Their brows were furrowed and they walked just one bit shy from running. As if he could transfer some of his calm onto his friends, Lance relaxed his posture. “Hey, guys. Where’s the fire? What’s gotten you so out of breath?”

Heaving a breath, Pidge pointed an accusing finger at him. “You!” Her eyes glinted dangerously and he resisted the urge to take a step back.

“...me?”

Hunk reached out and pressed Pidge’s arm back to her side. “Um, yeah. Kind of. We’re just... curious, you know? We’ve barely seen you for two weeks and you just came back from an overnight trip but you’re already preparing to leave again? We just… miss you.”

For the first time since he had left Keith this morning, Lance felt peace settle into his chest. A wide grin stretched across his face as he looked at his two best friends, who were still frowning at him. He felt warm all over. “Aww, guys, that’s super sweet. You don’t have to worry though, this handsome man here never forsakes his admirers. I’ll be back before you know it.”

“I don’t even know why we tried,” Pidge grumbled, but it lacked her usual sarcastic tone. Instead, her round eyes found Lance’s and she wrapped him up in a hug. “We don’t know where you’re going, but come back soon.”

Lance was shocked. Pidge liked casual contact but it had been a while since she had last hugged him like this. Slowly, carefully he wrapped his arms around her. Searching for an explanation, Lance looked up at Hunk.

“You leave at morning, return at night just to leave at morning again. Today you even stayed away overnight. We’ve come up with a few theories on what you could have been doing but bottom line is that you never kept a secret like this before,” Hunk said, shrugging. Lance could see the hurt in his eyes though and felt his heart give a squeeze.

“It’s not- I’m not keeping a huge secret or anything,” he lied. “I’m just… meeting someone.”

Hunk looked at him with raised eyebrows and Pidge froze in his arms. “Meeting… someone?”

“Yep. I’m meeting someone.” Aware of how that sounded, Lance flushed red. It wasn’t a lie though! He really was meeting someone. It was just that that someone was... a dragon, not a person. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’m safe.”

Pulling back from his arms, Pidge grimaced at him. “Gross.” Lance spluttered and flicked her forehead.

“ _Not_. I’ll have you know that I usually have a lot of fun-”

“Okay, that’s more than enough information,” Hunk interrupted, placing his hands over Pidge’s ears. She nodded and placed her own ones above his as if it would help drown out any further words. Lance could see that they were appeased though, at least for now - he would have to have a real talk with them later on still.

Grinning impishly, Lance gave a deep bow. “Right, so, if you don’t need me anymore, I have somewhere to be.”

 

* * *

 

Four days later, Lance looked down at Keith with a sick feeling in his stomach. He had brought him a cow every day, but his wounds had just gotten worse. Keith was weak and irritable and Lance could see that he was fighting with what they were both knowing but refusing to acknowledge.

But Lance was Lance and he knew when he had no choice but to address the topic at hand.

“It’s not working,” he said quietly. He was sitting with his back against a relatively smooth rock, Keith’s head on the ground next to him. If he extended his arm to the left, he could probably caress over his closed eyelid. “Keith, are you listening? It’s not working.” Slowly, the eye opened and fixed him in place. Lance didn’t bother hiding his concern. “We need to think of something else, and fast.”

Keith’s eye narrowed as if he was in pain and he breathed out, smoke caressing the ground in front of them. “I know.”

“I refuse to let you die.”

“I know. I’m not very fond of the idea either.”

Letting out a dry laugh, Lance threw a stone in front of him. “So, what’s the plan now?”

Silence.

“Keith?”

A deep rumble rose from the dragon’s chest, one that Lance recognized as a sigh. The eye opened again, tired but with resolve. Lance felt hope rise in his chest - that look could only mean that Keith had a plan, right?

“There might be a way to help me still.” Sitting up straighter, Lance gave him his full attention. “Or it might kill me immediately. It’s hard to tell.”

As sudden as the hope had risen in his chest, Lance felt dread settle into his stomach. “Just tell me already. No need to make this more dramatic than it already is.”

Now it was Keith’s turn to let out an amused huff. “I was just being honest.”

“Then be honest in a less dramatic way.”

“ _You_ of all people have no right to call me dramatic.”

Lance laughed and posed as best as he could whilst sitting down and leaning against an uncomfortable stone. “Now, now, what are you saying? Being dramatic would include exaggerating something and I am not doing that when I say that I’m the most handsome man I know.”

The flat look Keith gave him in response made his smile a tick more genuine. It was much better than the exhaustion from earlier. For a while there was just silence between them, then Keith finally spoke up again.

“I can turn human.”

Huh?

Lance blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of these words. No matter how he turned them though, they didn’t make any sense. He was vaguely aware that he was staring at Keith with his mouth wide open, but he couldn’t bring himself to _stop_. Keith could what?

“I - sorry man, could you repeat that? I think somewhere on the way to my brain the words turned into gibberish.”

Keith closed his eye again and breathed out another cloud of smoke. “I can turn human. All dragons can, really. It takes a lot of energy though and we have a certain time limit-”

“Wait,” Lance interrupted, voice climbing higher by the second. “You can turn _human?!_ And you never thought you could have mentioned that before?!”

“Why? I don’t see how it would make a difference,” Keith answered, glaring at Lance. Lance just furiously shook his head and pointed accusingly at him.

“No, no, no, no, that changes _everything_. You guys can turn human and you still eat us?! Don’t you think that’s fucked up beyond measure?!”

“I just told you that it’s really hard for us to do! Most dragons never shift once in their whole lives. Some probably don’t even know how to do it. Our human bodies are weak in comparison to these ones-”

But Lance wasn’t even listening anymore. He had his hands buried in his hair and stared at the ground. “What the fuck? What the actual fuck? Human?! What the _fuck_?!”

“Yes, Lance, _human_. The problem is that my human body might not be able to handle an injury like this - but maybe your medicine would work then.”

Okay. Okay, he had to reschedule his freak out to a later point in time, for now he had to help Keith. “So, if you-” he cleared his throat to get rid of the cracks, “-if you shifted, how would the wounds translate?”

Keith turned his head away, leaving Lance to stare at his neck. “I don’t know. None of my organs were damaged so that should probably be safe, but human bodies are even worse with infections than ours…”

Lance was a no physician. He couldn’t treat an infection.

But fuck, if they didn’t try this then Keith would die anyway. Slower, but inevitably. He wouldn’t allow that.

Breathing in deeply, he forced his brain to get to work. “Okay. Okay, so, we need to get you clothes. We probably shouldn’t even attempt to take you back to the city, I doubt that the ride there would do you any good. I’ll get a physician to come here, I’ll just tell them that I found you injured in the forest or something. We’ll also need blankets and fire, you won’t be able to keep yourself warm like you used to as a dragon.”

Keith turned his head back around, eyes wide. “What are you-”

“Hey now, why are you looking so surprised?” Lance gave a wry smile and raised one eyebrow. “I already told you that I’m not gonna let you die if a little money could save your life.”

 

* * *

 

“So, buddy…”

“You’ve barely been back for an hour and you’re already asking for another favor?”

Lance grinned innocently and gave Hunk his best puppy eyes impression. “Is that a yes?”

 

* * *

 

Lance led Shay around the last batch of rocks towards the cave. He had already brought some blankets and clothes yesterday but had decided to bring even more now. After all, he knew from experience how uncomfortable the ground was.

“We’re almost there. I hope he didn’t just wander off,” Lance joked. “He was in a pretty bad state when I left him here yesterday.”

“It is very nice of you to help him, your highness.”

“No, that’s - it’s nothing, I couldn’t very well leave him injured on the ground, could I?” Kicking some loose rubble away, Lance reached out to help Shay up towards the cave. It had been hard to answer her questions about how Keith had looked when he had ‘found’ him in the forest when Lance hadn’t even seen his human form yet. He had just dumped the clothes and the blankets in front of the dragon and told him to make sure to shift into a human before noon or - should he not succeed - leave the cave until nightfall. They wanted to minimize the time Keith had to spend as a human with his wounds still untreated.

“You could have. The man must appreciate your kindness,” Shay answered, smiling sweetly. Blushing a little under the unexpected compliments, Lance shrugged.

“It’s really not that much of a big dea- I mean, of course he does. Everyone does. That’s what’s so great about me.” He laughed nervously and prayed that Keith had succeeded in his transformation. Explaining how he had ended up this far out in the forest had already been a number, if he also had to explain that the heavily injured man climbed out of the cave and escaped into the forest again he could just as well introduce himself as liar extraordinaire next time he met Shay.

Once they had reached their destination, Lance peeked inside the cave. “Keith?”

“Here,” a slurred voice answered him. It was higher than Keith’s usual voice but rough with the edges of pain.

He had answered though. That meant the wounds hadn’t killed him yet.

Turning towards Shay, Lance tried his best not to seem overly impatient. “Hurry, he’s in kind of a bad-”

But Shay had already brushed past him, quickly stepping up to the bundle of blankets near the wall. Lance followed immediately, curious as to how Keith looked like.

Unruly black hair was the first thing he noticed. Next came pale, white skin and dark eyes, sunken in deep. It was obvious that he was not healthy, the ragged breaths and cold sweat on his forehead proved as much. Despite all that, he was almost painfully pretty. When Lance had finally regained his voice, Shay had already set out to peel the blankets away from him.

“Um. Yeah, so, okay. Uh. This is Keith. Keith, this is the help I promised you. Shay is the daughter of a physician, I’m sure she’ll be able to help you.”

Keith’s features contorted into something that Lance thought was supposed to be a smile but looked more like a grimace than anything else. “Thanks,” he choked out. His discomfort was so obvious that it left Lance itching to do something, _anything_ to relieve his pain. He didn’t know how to help though - so he just sat down above his head, watching anxiously as Shay removed the last blanket.

The girl turned towards Keith and gave him a tight-lipped smile. “You will have to let go of your side for me to assess the wound,” she said. Keith breathed out heavily but let go of his torso, a small noise of pain escaping his lips when his skin moved in response.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Lance couldn’t keep watching this. He hovered a trembling hand above Keith’s forehead, inadvertently catching his attention.

“You doin’ good?” he asked, in a desperate attempt to lighten the mood. Somehow, Keith managed to give him the same flat stare he always had in his dragon form.

“What do you think?”

“Looks just fine to me.”

Keith huffed out a laugh just to wince immediately after. “Maybe- maybe you should ask the girl to take a look at your eyes first. Seems urgent.”

Lance laughed, but the laughter immediately caught in his throat when Keith let out another noise of pain. A quick glance down showed him that Shay was inspecting the wound now, gently prodding at the skin surrounding it. Keith had his hands balled into fists and the strain on his body was evident.

“I want you to turn over to your side, can you do that?” Shay asked Keith. Keith nodded immediately, biting his lip as he shifted. When he saw Keith bury his face in his arm, he knew that he couldn’t keep sitting around any longer.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

Shay glanced up at him, then down at the stuff she brought with her. Keith’s wound glistened sickly in the light, some of the ichor mixing with blood and slowly trailing down his back. Lance wanted to throw a blanket over it and forget he had ever seen it. How could anyone deal with wounds like that on a daily basis?

“I brought some water, but I’ll probably need more. Get some fresh one directly from where the stream exits the mountain. You can use the bucket that I tied to Balmera - but make sure you clean it out before you fill it up.”

Nodding heavily, Lance made his way out of the cave.

 

* * *

 

It took Shay quite a while to finish patching Keith up. Lance mostly just hovered at the side, handing Shay whatever she needed or heating up the needle when it got too cold. Keith had been awake for the entire stitching process, sometimes muffling curses and screams into the blankets near his head. Whenever that happened, Lance swallowed and tried to tune the noise out - there was nothing he hated more than hearing his friends suffer and not being able to do anything about it.

When Shay had finally packed her bags, another challenge had come up.

“Alright, that’s all I can do for him. I will send someone back with instructions-”

“No!” Lance cut in. Shay blinked.

“Your Highness?”

“I’ll take care of him,” he said firmly. Frowning a little, Shay visibly debated whether she should say what she was thinking or keep quiet about it. It was just one of the many things Lance disliked about being a prince. Suppressing a sigh, he gave her a tight-lipped smile. “Or what do you think?”

“It’s just- it’s dangerous out here. The dragons live close to the mountain, right?”

Lance would have laughed at that if Keith’s ragged breathing hadn’t still haunted him. “It’s fine. I brought my sword and my shield and I doubt that they would enter a small cave at the bottom of it.”

“But… wouldn’t it be better to leave this to someone else? Or at least have a guard join you?”

There it was again. If he had been a regular knight, he would have been allowed to do this, no questions asked. It seemed that no matter how he acted, people didn’t listen to him anymore. Had he known what his silly-boy act would get him into later, he never would have started it.

“Nah. Leave them to do their job at the castle. I already know how to put all your stuff on his injuries and I’ll survive two nights without a bed. Besides, I’ll get to hear tons of interesting stuff once he is well enough again. He said that he wasn’t from around here and how often do I get to talk to people from other kingdoms that aren’t politicians?”

Shay obviously wasn’t quite satisfied with it, but Lance kept the smile on his face until she sighed and left. He accompanied her down to the horses and made sure that she still remembered the way back before he climbed back up and made his way over to Keith.

“Hey,” he whispered. “Are you awake?”

“Sort of,” Keith slurred. Giving a small smile, Lance tugged the blankets around until Keith lay with his back to the wall. Shay had given him something against the pain, but she had warned Lance that it would make him drowsy. Apparently, she was right.

“How does it feel?” Lance asked, pulling another blanket over Keith. The man blinked, glassy eyes observing the small fire they had used to heat the needle in.

“Shitty.”

“I can imagine.”

“No, you can’t. I’m not even sure if my left side still exists, it’s just this- this- this-”

Grinning, Lance sat down with his legs crossed next to Keith’s head. With the blankets all drawn up like that, he looked honestly adorable. Lance had a hard time connecting the figure of the pale man with the gigantic, red dragon from before. “Thiiiiis?”

“This. This… this.” With every ‘this’ Keith seemed to get more confused, as if he had forgotten what he had actually wanted to say.

“This what?” Lance asked, raising an eyebrow. Keith frowned at the fire and pouted a little.

“This. Dragon nest. Fucking hurts.”

A single laugh escaped Lance before he was able to hold it in. “Dragon nest?” he snickered, watching as Keith tried to turn his head to glare at him. His hair stuck up at impossible angles and a single strand fell directly into his eyes, making him try to blow it away. Lance laughed again and brushed it aside, just to be met by a deep scowl.

“‘S not funny!”

“I thought dragons don’t have homes.”

“No, no, they don’t, but they have places to put their eggs. Very warm places. Freaking hot places.”

Snickering again, Lance patted Keith’s head. For someone that had been sweating a lot, it was weirdly soft. Kind of like the hair of a young child. “So what you’re saying is that your wounds are hot?”

Keith nodded furiously and scowled even more when it made the hair fall back into his eyes. “On fire,” he confirmed.

Staying here was one of the best decisions of his life, Lance decided. Drugged up Keith was hilarious.

 

* * *

 

It was in the middle of the night when Lance was woken up by a curse. He jolted awake, disoriented and rubbing at his eyes as he tried to make out where he was. This wasn’t his room. This wasn’t his bed either, it was way too hard to-

Stone. The cave. Keith.

 _Keith_.

Lance turned to the bundle of blankets on the other side of the fire, squirming around as if in pain. Right, the medication had probably worn off already.

“Keith?”

The movement stilled.

“Lance?” was the tentative answer. Lance smiled unconsciously and kicked his blankets off to crawl over to where Keith was.

“You okay?”

“No. My entire left side is just pain.”

“Yeah, hang on, Shay left something for that. Some kind of drug, I think. It made you a little loopy last time.” Lance flopped onto his stomach to get to the medicine containers Shay had left them and only mildly regretted it when the cold from the stone seeped through his clothes.

“Honestly, I couldn’t care less what it is. If it makes the pain stop, I want it.” Humming in acknowledgment, Lance squinted at the bottles. The labels were pretty much indiscernible in the low light from the cave. He should have brought up more wood before he went to sleep that night.

Finally, Lance found it. He let out a small noise of victory and scrambled back to his knees, bringing the bottle and a flat bowl with him. “Okay, I got the stuff, you’ll have to sit up for that though.”

After a bit of maneuvering and lots of curses, Lance had managed to prop Keith up far enough that he wouldn’t choke on the liquid. He rested half on Lance’s legs, one of Lance’s arms supporting his neck until he had swallowed all the medicine in the bowl. Then he carefully guided him back down, trying to ignore how the bare skin of his back felt under his hands. Keith wore pants, but no shirt. Why would he, when he could barely move his torso?

“Better now?” Lance asked awkwardly. Why was he so awkward? He couldn’t wait for Keith to turn back into his dragon form, then he wouldn’t be so confused anymore. Just because he was a little pretty-

No. Lance refused to finish that thought. There was nothing to it. Keith was a little pretty, that was all.

“I literally just took it, I don’t think the medicine works that fast.”

“Maybe it does.”

“Then it doesn’t work at all.”

A weak grin snuck onto Lance’s face but it disappeared immediately when Keith shivered. Without another word, he got up and got him one of his blankets.

“No, I’m fine, I don’t need-”

“Dude, you’re a dragon. You got born in fire, you need the-”

“I got what?” Keith asked, sounding completely befuddled. Lance snickered and took advantage of his confusion to cover him with the blanket.

“That’s what you told me. Dragon eggs get put in very warm places. Freaking hot places. Like fire.”

“I- what? When did I say that?” Keith craned his neck to look at him and Lance widened his smirk.

“Just a few hours ago. You told me quite a lot of stuff, actually. You talked about dragon nests and flying, about how you want some money, about how handsome you think I am-” He would have continued had Keith not started coughing violently. “Woah, are you okay? What happene-”

“Did I really say that?!” Keith sounded absolutely mortified. As soon as his concern had risen, it disappeared again and he decided to mess with him a little more.

“You sure did. Something about a dazzling smile, I believe. And strong shoulders.”

Keith groaned and pulled the blankets over his head. The movement must have hurt his side, but he seemed so wrapped up in his embarrassment- wait.

“Kill me now.”

 _Wait_.

“Wait, are you- do you really think that?!”

“No!” Keith’s answer came a little too quickly. Lance couldn’t help the way his eyebrows wandered up his forehead.

“Are you serious?!”

“No, I just said that- wait.” Slowly, Keith pulled the blankets back down and frowned at Lance. Even in the dark Lance was able to see the blush on his face. “Were you... did I actually say that or did you just make that up?!”

Holy shit.

Keith thought he was handsome. And had a nice smile and strong shoulders.

A giddy feeling spread through Lance and he smirked widely. “Does it matter still? You just admitted to thinking it anyway.”

From where he sat, Lance had a prime place to witness Keith’s blush spreading even further before he groaned and pulled the blanket over his head again. Lance laughed openly and affectionately ruffled his hair, loving how it felt between his fingers. “Relax, buddy. I think you’re quite attractive too. There’s no shame in that.”

No response. Alright then. Lance was way too happy to go back to sleep though. Instead of making his way towards his own blankets, he leaned back against the wall and scooted to the side until his knees were almost touching Keith’s head. Then he began talking about anything and everything, slowly coaxing Keith back into making conversation with him and bringing himself closer to sleep. At a lull in their talk, his eyes had just fallen shut when Keith asked his next question.

“Hey, Lance.”

“Hm?”

“The girl called you ‘your Highness’.”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Lance was aware that this was an important question. At the moment, he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why though. “Yeah. ‘s that a problem?”

There was a beat of silence and he almost fell asleep. Keith’s soft “no” was the last thing he heard.

 

* * *

 

Sometime around noon Shay came back to check on Keith and bring some new food. Lance was thankful for that, he hadn’t realized how much faster his food stack would drain now that he had to share with Keith. Two soldiers had followed her to the cave, presumably to protect her - when one of them offered to stay behind, Lance glared at him and ordered him to return to the castle. Keith still had to take his pain medicine, which meant that he could very well just start talking about dragons again.

When the night approached, Lance made sure to gather more wood this time. Keith watched him from his spot on the ground, impatiently drumming his fingers as if he had too much energy. He probably had, after all he hadn’t been allowed or able to do more than roll over a few times a day.

“You hungry yet?” Lance asked when he was finished. Keith nodded eagerly. Grinning to himself, Lance dug out some bread. When they had had lunch earlier, he had noticed that Keith loved it.

And, sure enough, as soon as his eyes fell on the bread they lit up. He eagerly extended an arm for it and Lance handed it to him before he helped him to prop himself up against the wall. Shay had shown him how to position the blankets beneath him so that it put the least possible amount of strain onto his wounds.

“I can’t believe that of all the things you could have taken a liking to it is bread. Like. Not even apples? At least they taste like _something_.”

Keith chewed furiously and swallowed his too-big chunk of bread to glare at Lance. “Bread also tastes like something. It’s good. Besides, you’d be surprised by what kinds of things you start missing when they get taken away from you.” He took another way too large bite and Lance grimaced.

“Relax, the bread isn’t gonna run away. You can eat it without almost choking yourself, you know.”

Keith still glowered at him but calmed down a little. His next bite was decidedly smaller. Smiling fondly and shaking his head, Lance turned his head away.

“Also, our situations are different. I mean, I actually lived as a human before, so if I suddenly turned into a dragon I had a lot of things that I could choose from to miss. Stuff like my friends and family. Or riding my horse, Blue is a sweetheart that only deserves the best. Or my bed. Or apple tarts, they are delicious. Why on earth would I stick to _bread_?”

“Bread is good,” Keith insisted, weaker this time. He raised his hand as if he wanted to take a bite but lowered it again. Instantly, Lance became concerned.

“Keith? Buddy? You okay? Do you need more stuff for the pain?” A little forlorn, Keith’s huge eyes blinked at him. From this close, Lance could tell that they had a grayish blue color, almost like storm clouds. He got lost in them until they widened and Keith shook his head.

“No, I- I’m fine. Not yet. In an hour or something though, I think I feel it come back.”

Lance nodded slowly before tearing his eyes away from Keith’s face. What was he doing? Was he developing a crush on a dragon just because it had said that he was handsome?

That thought felt wrong to Lance, somehow. It didn’t take him long to figure out that the ‘it’ part of the phrase was what bothered him. Since when had he started seeing Keith as someone so precious that he couldn’t go back to his earlier opinion on him?

“Alright, cool,” Lance said, a little louder than necessary to drown out his thoughts. “Then finish eating your bread before the dragon nest starts building in your side again.”

Keith gave him a flat look and took another bite of his bread. Lance just grinned back and winked. He wouldn’t let him forget about that, ever.

Not long after that, Keith stopped eating again. He stared down at his bread as if it had hurt him but still held the answers to every question in the universe. Unsure of what to do, Lance inched a little closer to him. “Keith?”

Looking up, Keith gave him an earnest look. “I’m fine. Just… remembering some things.”

“About bread?” Lance asked teasingly. Much to his surprise, Keith nodded. Frowning, Lance stared at the bread too. “Did you eat bread before? Do dragons have some kind of advanced bread that tastes like meat?”

Keith scoffed and lowered his hand completely. “No. Why would we even try to make bread if we’re gonna make it taste like meat?”

“Don’t know, dragons are weird,” Lance said. But Keith still wasn’t eating again, he had a faraway look in his eyes as if he was lost in memories. After a moment of hesitation, Lance piped up again. “What are you remembering then?”

Keith turned his head towards him, then he looked down again. His hands played with the bread and ripped it into small pieces before attempting to roll them to tiny balls.

“I wasn’t always a dragon,” Keith began quietly. That sentence had Lance sitting up straight and staring at him in horror.

As if Keith had read his thoughts, he shook his head. “No, not like that. I meant, I didn’t spend my whole life in my dragon form. My dad - my dad was human.” He stopped and took a deep breath. “I never knew him.”

Lance furrowed his brows and looked down himself. “What about your mom, then?”

“My mom met my dad in her human form. At least that’s what I assume - she never talked about him. I don’t know anything about him.” One of the bread balls rolled down the blankets and next to Lance’s knee. “We - dragons don’t really have families. Mothers help their children to learn how to fly, hunt and talk and then they are on their own. Sometimes we check in on each other, but I never had what you guys call a family.”

Lance kept quiet and picked the piece of bread up to knead it himself.

“I met other dragon children, back then. They were all bigger than I was though and apparently they had never felt the same urge as I had. To know where they came from, to know who their father was. To- to have a _family_ , you know?

“When I asked mom about it, she told me about how my father was a human. She showed me how to shift and reminded me that it’s exhausting and never works for longer than a day each moon cycle - but that didn’t seem true for me. I could go for two weeks without having to shift back.

“Once I had the transformation down, I decided to go look for my dad.” At that point, Keith threw a small piece of bread away. Lance watched it fall into the flames and burn to a crisp. “I never found him. I did find a city though - a big city with a huge gate.”

“The capital,” Lance immediately blurted out. Keith nodded.

“Yeah. I found Altea. They wouldn’t let me in though - even with clothes I was still a homeless child without money that couldn’t speak. I had to sneak in at night when the guards were tired and didn’t pay as much attention to their surroundings.”

“I’ll have to have a word with them on that,” Lance joked. Keith huffed out a laugh and threw another piece of bread into the fire.

“Maybe you should. I was nine or ten years old back then, if I could make it in there, anyone could.” He paused to pluck some more bread into pieces and offered Lance half of it. Lance declined. Shrugging with his right shoulder, Keith continued.

“Anyway, I found my way into the city. I was convinced that if my dad was anywhere, then he had to be here. I think I spent months like that - being human for two weeks, sneaking out for two days and then back in again. And honestly? It was hell.”

Keith threw a bigger piece of bread at the fire. The fire accepted it willingly.

“Can you imagine what it is like to live as a homeless kid on the streets? I understood everyone, but I couldn’t figure out how my vocal cords worked, so I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t ask for my father, I couldn’t ask for work, I couldn’t even ask for food. I couldn’t ask for anything.”

Lance noticed how his face had twisted up in sympathy and he smoothed it out again. Instead, he inched even closer to Keith.

“I would have died, had it not been for Sir Shirogane,” Keith stated plainly. Lance blinked in surprise, then ripped his head around to stare at Keith.

“You know Shiro?! Like, _actually_ know him?!”

Keith gave him a vague smile before he turned back towards the fire and nodded. “He was still a child back then, too. Fifteen years old, maybe? Sixteen? But ever since he saw me for the first time he would come find me every day without fail. And every time he would give me a small loaf of bread. It probably wasn’t worth much to him, I doubt he even remembers, but it meant the world to me. He singlehandedly kept me alive. The first words I ever said to a human was a ‘thank you’ to Shiro.”

Lance felt his heart swell. He had never been so fiercely proud of Altea’s first knight as he was now.

“Shiro’s a pretty great guy,” he said. “He would probably apologize if he knew that he’s the reason you can barely move now.”

Letting out a self-deprecating huff, Keith shook his head. “I’m a _dragon_. Or did you forget? I tried to steal your cows.”

“You’re a half-dragon,” Lance corrected. “And you stole them because we keep hunting in the forest. If he knew you, he would apologize.”

For a moment, nothing but the cracking of the fire filled the silence between them. Then Keith chuckled softly. “Yeah, probably.”

Lance squashed down his urge to hug him and told him to go to sleep.

 

* * *

 

A week later found Lance back at the castle, running through the hallways in search of Shiro. He stopped a passing maid to ask her if she had seen him.

“Um. As far as I am aware, he is at the stables, your highness.” Lance breathed out his thanks and took off again, heading towards the stables. It didn’t take him long to make out Shiro with one of the other knights, someone whose name Lance didn’t even remember.

It didn’t matter. He had a very important question to ask.

“Shiro! Hey, Shiro, do you have a moment?” he called out. Shiro raised his head to meet his eyes, then handed the reins of his horse to the other guy. Within moments, he was in front of Lance and bowed in greeting.

“Prince Lance. What can I do for you?”

“I have a question,” he said, leading the way out of the stables. He had wanted to make the whole thing as casual as possible but he didn’t really think that was possible anymore. Not with how out of breath he had been when he had called out to him.

“Ask away.”

Lance fiddled with the hem of his shirt for a moment, then he stopped in his path and turned towards Shiro. “Do you remember anything from ten years ago?”

Whatever Shiro had expected him to ask, it hadn’t been that. Confusion was evident on his face as he furrowed his brows and tried to think back to the past. “I… I suppose. It depends on what you are referring to. It might be safer to ask Coran-”

“I’m actually talking about a person,” Lance interjected. He studied Shiro’s face for any signs of recognition, but it remained blank, if not a little curious.

“Whom are we talking about?”

“A kid. Black hair, big eyes. Homeless, rarely spoke. He said you brought him bread every morning.”

Shiro’s eyes went wide in surprise, but there was definitely something. Shiro _remembered_. Slowly, a smile spread itself over Lance’s face.

Shiro, on the other hand, just seemed to get more confused by the second. “I… remember him, yeah.” Lance beamed and Shiro’s frown deepened. “Am I in trouble?”

And that’s when he realized that homeless kids weren’t exactly encouraged to stay in the city. He quickly shook his head and threw his arms out. “Not at all! I met him when I was out in the villages one day. He told me about you and he said that you saved his life back then. Up until today, bread is still his favorite thing to eat. You would think that he was sick of it, but I think he connects it with you as the first person to ever take care of him.”

For a moment, Shiro looked as surprised as one could get. Then, a happy smile spread across his face.

“How is he doing?”

“Good,” Lance lied. “He’s fine. He never found his family but he’s got a life now and he talks a lot more. He is very grateful to you for doing what you’ve done.”

Shiro’s smile deepened. “If you see him again, tell him that I wish him all the best.”

 

* * *

 

Another week later, and Keith was at his limit. His wounds were much better now and although both of them were anxious about the transformation ripping them back open, they couldn’t exactly help it. Keith _needed_ to transform back; he was breaking out into cold sweat more often than not. If worst came to worst, they would have to call Shay back and have her redo the stitches once he could turn human again.

Luckily for both of them, it never came that far. The thread ripped but the wound was significantly smaller in Keith’s dragon form, so much so that Keith swore that it would be healed completely in a few days.

“This feels amazing. I’m never turning human again!” Keith exclaimed, spreading his wings as much as the small cave allowed. Lance laughed and rolled out of the way, almost entangling himself in the blankets that still lay around everywhere.

“I don’t believe you! That’d mean no more bread!”

“Some sacrifices have to be made,” Keith said solemnly. Lance laughed again - he just couldn’t help it. It was so good to see Keith on his feet and moving around, no matter what form he was in.

“I’m going out. I need to-” As if he wanted to demonstrate, Keith wiggled his wings a bit. An idea formed in Lance’s head and he smirked broadly, slapping Keith’s leg.

“Alrighty. Go on.”

He waited until Keith was mostly out of the cave, then he jumped onto his tail and wrapped his arms around it. Keith yelped and tried to twist his head around to look back into the cave, but failed.

“Lance! What are you doing?!” He bounced his tail and Lance clung just a little tighter, not wanting to fall off.

“You want to fly? I’m coming with you! Can you imagine that? I’ll be the first human to fly, like, ever! It’s gonna be amazing!”

“We are not doing that!”

“Are _so_ doing that.”

“Not.”

“So.”

“Not.”

“So.”

Keith let out a frustrated grumble and moved his tail again, harsher this time. Shouting in surprise, Lance just barely managed to close his legs around it too before Keith could throw him off.

_“Lance!”_

“Oh, come on, Keith,” he whined. “You talked so much about flying when you were on drugs. It sounded amazing, take me with you. I’m dying to know what it feels like.”

Silence. After three seconds passed, Lance knew he had won.

“Okay, fine,” Keith grumbled finally. “But you’re not clinging to my tail. That’s dangerous and you’re most definitely gonna fall. Let go.”

Hurrying to comply, Lance let go of Keith’s tail and scrambled out of the way. Keith exited the small cave and climbed to the side, claws digging into the mountain to keep him in place. Then, he lowered his head until his eye was on the same height as Lance’s.

“Oh fuck yeah! Does that mean I can ride your head?! My arms are way too small to go around your neck, I’m definitely gonna fall off there-”

Keith rolled his eyes and nudged his head against him. It had been a slow movement, so Lance managed to keep standing even when the impact was a little stronger than expected. “Get on already.”

With a grin so wide that it felt as if it was splitting his face in two, Lance climbed the dragon. He almost accidentally kicked Keith in the eye, but when he finally reached the top and managed to sit down between his two horns, it was all worth it. They weren’t even in the air yet and Lance already felt freer than he ever had before.

“You ready?” Keith asked as he slowly raised his head. Nodding eagerly, Lance patted the scales he was sitting on.

“So ready. The readiest ready. I was ready yesterday, man. I was born ready.”

A deep laugh rumbled out of Keith’s chest as he began to scale the mountain. Somehow, he managed to keep his head parallel to the ground so that Lance wasn’t afraid of accidentally falling off.

“That sounds like you were born yesterday.”

“Oh, shove off. I don’t need your smartassery right now, don’t ruin the moment.”

“What moment?” Keith asked, still sounding way too amused for Lance’s taste. He spread his arms and gave Keith’s forehead a solid kick.

“ _This_ moment. My first taste of freedom. I’m being kind enough to share it with you, the last you could do is not destroy my fun.”

“You think this is fun?”

“Hell yeah, this is fun!” Lance exclaimed as he twisted around to get a good look at the forest. Everything was tiny from up here - the trees were smaller than his hand already. Was that thing in the north-east the castle? Excitement spread through Lance, making his heart beat faster.

“If you think that’s fun, wait until you feel this.”

Startled, Lance snapped his head back around. “Feel what?”

Keith jumped.

Suddenly, Lance's stomach dropped and wind pulled at his clothes. It rushed over his body, through his hair, stealing away the air that he wanted to breathe in. Lance screamed in a mix of terror and anticipation - and then they were flying.

Their downwards fall had stopped and they were advancing evenly through the sky. Keith’s wings moved with ease, expertly steering them through the air and over the mountain. Above him, behind him and in front of him was sky - so much sky. Everything was blue and clear and when he looked down, he saw how the trees and rocks grew smaller and smaller.

“Keith! Keith, this is amazing!” Lance cheered. He could barely express the pure joy he felt. It was as if he had left all his worries on the ground, they were as unimportant and small as the trees. All that counted up here were Keith and him and the sky: vast and unexplored, full of possibilities.

No responsibilities.

No expectations.

No disappointments.

No one to hold him back.

“Hold on tight now, I’m going to dry diving now!” Keith called. Lance whooped in excitement and wrapped himself around one of Keith’s horns, laughing when he felt his stomach drop anew.

And they kept flying.

 

* * *

 

“That,” Lance panted, eyes sparkling, “was _amazing_. The most amazing thing ever. We’ve got to do this again.” His grin just wouldn’t disappear and he was convinced that the same would have been true for Keith, had he been in his human form. As it was, Lance just saw his eyes crinkling a little.

“Yeah?”

“Fuck yeah,” Lance confirmed. “Shit, dude. I would pay actual money to do that again. The others have no idea what they are missing out on.”

“I’m not sure they would want to join you even if they knew what they were missing out on,” Keith said. Pouting a little, Lance cuddled closer to him.

“You’re right. Probably not. We’d have to start with simple introductions for them. Like ‘hey Shiro, this is the guy I told you about. He’s also a dragon, care to go for a ride?’”

Smoke rose from Keith’s nostrils as he chuckled a little. Unfortunately, their current position meant that it got blown right into Lance’s face: he sat nestled in the crook between Keith’s foreleg and stomach, blankets spread around him in an attempt to make the scales comfier. Keith had curled his head around him so that it rested in front of Lance’s feet.

Coughing, Lance waved the smoke aside. “Rude! I need air to breathe, you know.”

Keith, that asshole, just breathed more smoke onto him. Screeching, Lance got to his feet and used a blanket to fan it all away.

“Who else?” Keith then asked suddenly. A little confused, Lance halted in his movements.

“Who else what?”

“Who else would you want to tell?”

Lance lit up at the question and plopped back down onto the ground. “Well, there’s Hunk and Pidge. They are my best friends and it’s honestly killing me to keep you a secret from them. Seriously, they are great - like, Pidge is kinda similar to you. A little less emo, a little less rude.”

Keith let out an offended rumble. Lance smirked. “Don’t even deny it, it’s the truth. She’s a huge nerd but a genuinely nice person - if we introduced you as a human first and then as a dragon, she’d have a blast, honestly. Hunk would be a little more difficult, he’s overly anxious and suspicious at times, but I’m sure you could convince him to like you. Like, he loves cooking so if you compliment his new creations he’s bound to love you really quickly.”

“Does he-”

“-know how to make bread? You bet,” Lance smirked. Keith’s eyes twinkled with amusement and Lance was once again struck by the almost overwhelming urge to hug him. Fuck. This crush-thing was getting out of hand if it had already extended over to the dragon part of Keith.

“There also is my cousin Allura! She isn’t very fond of dragons though - like, at all - so I’m not quite sure how we would break the news to her. You’d have to get close to her so that she won’t immediately try to kill you once you reveal yourself, but if you do get close to her and she finds out _after_ she might just want to kill you anyway because she would feel betrayed.”

“...encouraging,” Keith said drily. Lance waved his hands around.

“Don’t worry too much though, she’s not a monster. If we really explain the situation, I’m sure she’ll get it. It’s just that she was very close to her mother, who was killed at a dragon attack. After she died, my father moved to the castle to help the king raise Allura. My father and her mother were siblings, you know. So she just got used to have someone else around again when he was ripped away from us both - again by dragons.”

The mood between them had turned oddly sad, so Lance kept talking before Keith could get the stupid idea to apologize for something that wasn’t his fault. “So, yeah. She isn’t very fond of dragons. That was also when I was brought over to the court, by the way: the king didn’t have any other immediate family and his only heir was Allura. Suddenly I was second in succession to the crown, so I had to learn lots of new stuff. Coran taught me most of the stuff I know now… oh man, I’d love introducing you to Coran, I’m sure you would get along. He’s a little weird and eccentric sometimes but he’s a really good guy and always has an interesting story to share.”

That’s how they continued the day, Lance cuddling into Keith’s warmth and telling story after story about his friends, while Keith listened attentively.

 

* * *

 

Checking over the contents of the bag again, Lance nodded to himself. He had packed some extra bread this time, knowing that Keith would absolutely turn human just to eat it each mealtime. One day he would drag him over to the castle and make him eat a full meal and then they’d see if he still only wanted to eat bread.

Slinging the bag over his shoulder, Lance turned towards the door. Unfortunately, he didn’t get farther than one step before it fell closed. He wasn’t proud of the shriek he let out as a response but he thought that it was justified, that the very last. That was how all haunted castle stories began.

This castle thankfully wasn't haunted though. Standing where the door had previously leaned against the wall, were Pidge and Hunk. They had crossed their arms in a similar fashion and it took Lance around three full seconds to get enough air back into his lungs to talk to them.

“What the fuck, you guys! You nearly gave me a heart attack! What’s the deal?!”

“We want to know where you’re going,” Pidge stated plainly. Hunk nodded in support and frowned at him.

“Listen, man, it’s been like, three months or something. Three months since we’ve last really hung out together.”

“And that’s being generous. If we have to make a completely objective statement we’d go for three and a half months now,” Pidge chimed in. While his friends droned on and on with their complaints, Lance sighed and massaged his forehead. He had known that this day would come but he really needed to discuss it with Keith first.

“Okay, guys, listen,” he said, interrupting Hunk’s tirade on how Lance even got Shay to keep quiet about where he had taken her. “I’m not just leaving you in the dark without reason. I can’t really tell you where I’m going, but I promise I’ll be safe-”

“None of that anymore!” Pidge interrupted him. Her face was an expression of open rage and Lance unconsciously took a step backwards. Had he said something wrong?

“You- you keep telling us that you’re safe and you still like hanging out with us but you won’t tell us anything! You’ve come and gone for three months now, we _know_ that you are safe. We know that. But Lance, we are your friends and we want more than just that!”

When angry tears appeared in Pidge’s eyes, Hunk placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “She’s right, you know. We’re not some soldiers that are concerned about your safety just because you’re the prince. We’re your best friends and we love hanging out with you - we are, right?” Hunk fixed Lance with wide eyes. “We _are_ best friends, right? You’re not just leaving us behind?”

A wave of guilt crashed down onto him, so overwhelming that his knees got weak. “You are!” he shouted immediately, throwing his arms out. “You guys are my best friends! The best of the best! The crème de la crème, carefully selected out of thousands, most special best friends! Don’t doubt that!”

Lance had expected for Hunk to go ‘aww’ and everything returning to normal at that, but both of his friends just looked at him with sad eyes. Desperation and guilt battled in his body, making him run towards them and wrap them up in a big hug. For a few, dreadful seconds there was no reaction, then the others fiercely hugged him back. “Don’t doubt that, you guys,” Lance whispered, his voice cracking with emotion. “You’re the very best.”

“We know,” Pidge whispered back. “We know, but you- it’s just- it’s so _frustrating_.”

Somewhere above him, Hunk nodded. “Yeah, we get to see you happy and sad and nervous but we don’t even know the slightest thing about what is actually going on. Like, okay, you’re meeting someone. But that makes it even worse, it’s like you’re trying to build a life without us-”

“I would never,” Lance stated firmly. He turned his head towards Hunk as much as he could without letting up on the hug one bit. “Okay, big guy? I would never. The both of you are my best friends and you mean the world to me. I’ll talk to him and then I’ll make us all meet up and everything will be fine.”

For a few moments, there was nothing but silence. Then, a very confused Pidge let go of them to look at Lance’s face. “Wait. Him?”

“What about it?” he asked, one eyebrow raised. It finally dawned on him when he saw both Hunk and Pidge using their thinking faces and he blushed bright red. “Oh my- no, it’s not like that, I swear, we’re just-”

“Is that why you kept it a secret?” Hunk asked, sounding a bit miffed. “Seriously, Lance, you should have known that it wouldn’t be a problem with us-”

“No!” he squeaked, furiously shaking his head. His face was still red though, so he knew that no one would believe him anyway.

“Wow. Really? And _that’s_ what we were so worried about? I feel weirdly disappointed now,” Pidge grumbled and punched his arm. “Don’t do that again. Seriously, you can tell us anything, we’re not gonna judge.”

“I’d like to correct that statement - please _don’t_ tell us everything, I’m not sure how far you guys went but I’m really not interested in-”

“Hunk!” Lance protested. If the conversation continued like this, he was gonna die of embarrassment. “We never did that!”

“Oh, good. Then you can tell us everything, after all. I just didn’t want to listen to all the details of your-”

“Please,” Lance begged and slapped his hands in front of his face. “Please stop right there. I can’t take this anymore.”

The laughter that filled the kitchen made it all worthwhile again.

 

* * *

 

When Lance walked up to the cave that day, he was so deep in his thoughts that he only noticed the huge dragon when it was way too late. And with that, Lance meant that he pretty much stood face-to-face with it. Frozen to the ground, Lance's wide eyes met the dragon's yellow ones.

“Human,” it rumbled, its voice even deeper and rougher than Keith’s in his dragon state. That did the trick: Lance screamed and scrambled backwards, cursing when he lost his footing and tumbled down a few rows of stone. There was a painful scrape on his right elbow, but other than that he seemed fine. Fine enough to keep running anyway.

A dragon. A _dragon_. A _huge-ass_ dragon. It had been a while since he had last felt the all-encompassing terror that came with being in a life-threatening situation. In fact, the last time this had happened had to have been he had faced off against Keith when he had met him for the first time.

Freaking dragons.

In his haste to get to the ground as soon as possible, he almost missed Keith’s call for him. “Lance?”

Thank heavens. Maybe there was still a way he could come out of this alive, after all.

“Keith!” he called back, not slowing his descent. “Keith, I-” His foot slipped again and he cursed. “ _Fuck_. Keith, help me!”

Almost immediately, Keith shot out of the cave. Lance had never been so relieved to see a dragon coming towards him at full speed. While Keith protectively perched himself above him, Lance searched for a boulder to cower behind. Keith’s tail curled around him, not close enough to really touch, but close enough to provide cover should the other dragon decide to breathe fire at him.

A deep, foreign rumble cut through the air. Lance wasn’t sure what it meant, conversation or readying for an attack, so he wrapped his arms around himself and made himself as small as possible. His heart was racing, he felt like he was going to be sick, he didn’t want to die here-

An answering rumble came from way closer. That was Keith. Keith’s rumble. It sounded threatening and defensive and Lance squeezed his eyes shut, curling up a bit tighter. Oh, fuck no. He wasn’t prepared to die today. What would Pidge and Hunk think if he never came home after their conversation? What would Allura do without him?

But much to his relief, the anticipated attack never came. After two more rumbles, the other dragon just took off and flew away, leaving Keith to turn towards Lance and look at him with worried eyes.

“Are you okay?”

“Shit, dude. I thought I was gonna die,” Lance wheezed out. Enough emotional rollercoasters for today. He couldn’t deal with all the stuff this day threw at him anymore. Not leaving himself any time to think about it, Lance threw his arms around Keith’s nose.

Scaly. And hot. Well, that was a pathetic excuse for a hug.

Sighing, Lance let go again and let himself fall to the ground. Keith scrutinized him for a moment, then turned around and left. Lance wasn’t surprised at all when Keith joined him again not a minute later, this time fully clothed and in human form.

“...seriously, are you okay?” he asked, once he had settled down next to him. Making a dismissive hand motion, Lance let his head drop back against the stone.

“Rough day, is all. Who was that dragon? One of the evil guys? Your mom?”

“Ah,” Keith said, shifting a little in place as if he had a hard time getting comfortable. “Neither. That was Thace. He’s - one of the good guys, I guess. He doesn’t eat or injure humans but he’s not above scaring them away from our hunting grounds. You know the reasons.”

Nodding slowly, Lance closed his eyes. “Yeah, I guess.” He paused. “But man, he sure was gigantic. And his voice was all _grrrugh_ , deep and dangerous, the stuff from nightmares. It's what I always dreamt dragons would sound like.”

Keith let out a short laugh. It was beautiful. “That _is_ what dragons sound like. We communicate primarily through growls and some chopped off words, most of my ability to speak clearly comes from the time I spent in the city. From that, and having a more developed throat, I guess. Speaking has always been easier for me than for most others.”

This was fucked up. To think that Lance could have been dead by now if he had met a different dragon back then... to think that he most likely wouldn't even have been able to communicate with them...

Sighing deeply, he let his head drop onto Keith’s shoulder. Keith jumped a little, but didn’t complain. Quite the contrary, actually - Lance felt him shift around until he found a position that was more comfortable for both of them.

It made him feel warm. Keith made him feel warm. Always.

Turning his head to nuzzle against Keith’s shoulder and hide his blush at the same time, Lance breathed in deeply. “Hey. Would you be okay with meeting Pidge and Hunk?”

Lance felt Keith’s muscles stiffen underneath him. “Like… meet like this or…”

“We’re not gonna tell them about your dragon identity right at your first meeting, duh. They are just curious where I disappear to all the time.”

“Oh,” Keith said. Slowly, his posture softened again and Lance used that opportunity to completely press his entire face to his arm. “...Lance?”

“Is that a yes?” he croaked out.

“I mean… sure? I guess?” One of Keith’s hands came up to awkwardly pat his shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“Peachy.” _You’re really awkward and smell like smoke and are only half human but you have the prettiest smile and the comfiest arms and I really want to kiss you right now._ Lance cleared his throat and pushed the thought away. “There’s just one problem.”

“...yeah?”

“...they kind of think we’re together. As in. You know. Seeing each other.”

Lance honestly wasn’t sure how he had even managed to get these words out, his face was burning right now. This was way too embarrassing for him to handle. Good thing that he still had his face hidden in Keith’s arm.

“Um. Okay,” Keith said. Frowning, Lance pulled back a bit. Keith was obviously embarrassed and blushing quite a bit, but his eyes were round and earnest.

“Okay?” he asked again. Keith nodded quietly while Lance tried to make sense of his words. “Is that like - _okay_ okay or just okay? Is that okay because 'hey, that’s an awkward misunderstanding but I’m sure we can clear it up' or is it okay like you’re okay to play along or is it okay because- y'know,  _because-_ ”

Keith shrugged awkwardly and rubbed his neck. “Whichever okay you want it to be, I guess.”

Lance’s eyes widened. “So, like-” his voice started climbing in pitch again and he had to clear his throat to get it back to normal. “You’d be okay with us… being together? _Actually_ being together?”

Keith shrugged and looked away, but his pink ears told Lance all he needed to know. Beaming, he let his head drop forward and nuzzled Keith’s shoulder again. “ _Fuck_ yes. Yes. Okay, let’s do that.”

Honestly, this day had been as chaotic as his life was but when Lance felt Keith’s arms settle around him, he wouldn’t change a thing about it.

 

* * *

 

No one even batted an eye at Lance bringing a stranger back into the city. The perks of having the reputation of a wayward prince, he supposed.

“Okay, so, first we gotta meet Shiro. I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you.”

Keith gave him a doubting look but didn’t protest. By now, Lance knew how to read his expressions: he was nervous. Nervous, but excited. Lance concluded that Keith had been wanting to talk to Shiro for a long time now, probably longer than Keith himself thought he had. The wound Shiro had given Keith had been a slash wound with his wings still being completely fine. Keith must have - consciously or not - let him come closer than advisable.

Dragging Keith through the castle’s hallways and telling him fun little anecdotes about each and every room they passed, he brought him into his room. He wasn’t surprised to see that Shiro was already there, waiting for them. After all, they had taken their time and he had asked the guards at the gate to send for him.

“Prince Lance,” Shiro greeted with his usual deep bow. “And a friend, I presume.” He also gave a quick bow for Keith, which left him incredibly flustered and Lance amused beyond measure.

“Yeah, you could say that. We’re… _friends_. Right, Keith?”

Keith gave him an owlish look before furrowing his brows in confusion. “Yeah, we are…”

“ _Friends_ ,” Lance repeated, putting emphasis on the word. Finally, it seemed to click in Keith’s brain, he flushed red and turned his head away. Smirking widely, Lance put his elbow on Keith’s shoulder and nodded towards Shiro. “Do you recognize him?”

Shiro was obviously taken by surprise. His eyes darted from Lance to Keith and back, as if he was searching for a past connection between them. “I’m afraid I don’t, your highness,” he then said slowly.

Giving Shiro an unimpressed look, Lance grabbed Keith’s cheeks and turned him towards the older man. “Look at him. Look at him closely, very closely. Do you see any resemblance…?” Both Keith and Shiro started to look freaked out, so Lance decided to give one last push. “...like someone you might have known ten years ago?”

All of a sudden, Shiro’s face lit up. “You are the boy from back then?” he asked, not unkindly. Keith shifted nervously in place.

“I’m… yeah?” His voice cracked a little. Clearing his throat, he tried again. Lance resisted the urge to poke his cheek and press a soft kiss to his forehead, they would have time for that later still. This was a moment for Keith and Shiro only.

“I mean. Yeah, I am. I wanted to personally thank you again for all that you've done for me.”

“You have got nothing to thank me for. Are you doing better now? Lance told me that you’re happier now,” Shiro smiled. Once again, Keith shifted nervously and shrugged.

“I’m… yeah. I’m better now. I have Lance and I mostly don’t have to worry about starving anymore.” Keith offered a weak grin that was openly returned by Shiro. There was a moment of silence, then Shiro stepped forward and offered a hand. Keith hesitantly reached out to grip it and immediately got pulled into a hug. “-huh?!”

“It’s good to know you’re still alive,” Shiro breathed, patting his back. He didn’t leave Keith enough time to return the hug before he held him away at arm’s length. “Sorry. You were just gone one morning and didn’t come back and I had assumed the worst. It’s a relief to see that I was wrong.”

Lance’s chest felt warmer when he saw Keith offer another tentative smile, finally able to connect with the one person that had saved his life so often in the past.

 

* * *

 

Keith’s introduction to Pidge and Hunk couldn’t have been more different.

Lance had told them to wait for them down at the courtyard so that they could visit town together, but Shiro had just left when they came rushing in. They would have probably tripped over each other in their eagerness to enter the room if Hunk hadn’t been twice as tall as Pidge. A little startled, Keith had just frozen in place and looked at them with wide eyes.

“So,” Pidge said, slightly out of breath and brushing some of her hair out of her face. “You’re the guy that stole Lance away from us.”

“Um…” Keith’s wide eyes searched Lance’s for help, but before he could say anything, Hunk interfered.

“Pidge, that’s not very nice. They are in love and all, of course they would spend a lot of time together. Though I have to admit that a three months long honeymoon was a little extreme.”

“Oh, come on, guys,” Lance complained, throwing an arm around Keith’s shoulders. The poor guy was so tense that it felt like he was hugging one of the rocks from the cave. “Be nice to him. It’s not his fault that I wanted to have an escape from the castle.” At that, Keith relaxed marginally and Lance squeezed his shoulder in reassurance.

“That is a very bad excuse, you’ve dragged us out of the castle more times that I can count on my fingers,” Hunk mumbled. Pidge gave a sharp laugh and nodded mischievously.

“True, that. If it’s not his fault that you were barely here, then it must be yours. We were planning on being kind and forgiving because we don’t know him yet, but if it’s you we’re talking about...”

Lance widened his eyes in an overly dramatic way and he let go of Keith to wave both hands in denial. “Nope. Not my fault. On second thought, that’s all on him.” Planting his hands on either side of Keith’s cheeks, Lance mimicked what he had done earlier and mushed them together. “Look at this handsome face, it has 'guilty as charged' written all over it.”

“You- what the-” Keith slapped his hands away and glared at him. “It _has not_. You never even mentioned your friends until I found out who you were!”

“Well, maybe if you had used your brain you still could have deduced that I have people that were waiting for me to come back home each night.” Lance grinned and Keith’s glare only intensified.

“If you hadn’t come back each day as if you didn’t have anything better to do than visit me then maybe I could have had a chance at deducing that!”

The grin transformed into a smirk as Lance wrapped his arms around Keith’s waist and waggled his eyebrows at him. “And if you hadn’t been so handsome and charming then I wouldn’t have had any problems with staying away.”

Promptly, Keith began blushing, even if his glare barely softened at all. But before he could say anything, Pidge gave an exaggerated sigh behind his back.

“For real now, Lance? I thought you wanted to introduce us, not flirt with him in front of our eyes.”

With his smirk intensifying, Lance fixed Pidge and pressed a loud, wet kiss onto Keith’s forehead. “Why not both?”

“Ew, get _off_ me!”

“Gross.”

“Yeah, that was a little gross.”

 

* * *

 

One day later, they were back at the cave. Keith was helping Lance gather up the blankets and stack them onto a neat pile in the corner, it seemed that a wild animal of some sort had trudged in and messed them up. Half of them were torn to pieces now and not suited for protecting anyone against the cold.

Which, honestly, just helped to prove Lance’s point.

“You’ve gotta move in with us.”

“Lance-”

“Oh, come on, Keith. What are you so afraid of?” Waving a torn blanket around, Lance made sure to get Keith’s full attention. “They loved you. Pidge even asked me when I’d bring you around next time. And Hunk was severely disappointed when I told him that the only thing you’d want to have on a ‘welcome to the family’-dinner was bread.”

Keith let out an alarmed noise and dropped his blankets. His eyes held enough panic that Lance really just wanted to drop his own stuff and hug him. “ _A ‘welcome to the family’-dinner?!_ That was my first time meeting them! Not to mention all the other problems that are going to come up: even if I wasn’t a dragon, I’m still not a noble - and I can’t read, horses hate me, I don’t know the first thing about getting a paid job-”

“Keith,” Lance interrupted and threw the blanket to the ground. “You wouldn’t have to do all that. I mean, look at me - apart from a few fancy dinners and even fewer political meetings no one expects anything from me. And it’s not like you can’t learn all of that stuff - I’ll help you, even.” When Keith still looked unconvinced, Lance kept talking. “Your life would get a lot easier if you came with me.”

“But yours would get a lot more difficult,” Keith said quietly. Lance’s heart gave an uncomfortable squeeze and he let out a laugh.

“Actually, my life would get a lot easier too. I wouldn’t have to ride for hours on end each day to get to this cave. I wouldn’t have to bother hiding you anymore, I could actually work on improving my reputation at court, I could-” Hesitating for only a moment, Lance kept going. Keith needed to hear this. “I could have you by my side when I don’t feel like I’m enough. That’s what we are: the backup and the outcast, constantly supporting each other.”

Lance could see that his words had hit the target this time, Keith’s shoulders dropped and he gave him a vulnerable look. “But- I’m not a woman either, I don’t-”

“ _Dude_.” Stepping forward, Lance gripped Keith’s shoulders. “No one cares. Alright? No one cares about all the crap you’re worried about. No one has high hopes for me anyway. If there is one person in the entire kingdom that you could have chosen to fall in love with, you chose the right one. Seriously, I have all the benefits a member of the royal family has, but no one expects me to know proper etiquette. I’m just the idiot prince in the background. People care about keeping me alive for the sake of having a backup, but not much else. They couldn’t care less about who I chose as my partner.”

After a long moment of silence, Keith sighed and brushed his arms aside. “I never said I fell in love with you,” he mumbled. Lance took his lack of protest as the agreement it was and beamed.

“Yeah, well, I’m a mind reader. You don’t have to say it for me to know it.”

Keith huffed out a laugh and raised one eyebrow at him. “A mind reader, huh? Then what am I thinking about right now?”

“Moving with me to the castle.”

“No.”

“Pidge’s and Hunk’s first impression of you.”

“No.” Lance pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes at Keith. Keith stared right back, expression mostly neutral save for the sparkle in his eyes. Smirking, he took a step forward and loosely draped his arms around Keith’s neck.

“Kissing me,” he breathed into the space between them. A small smile played on Keith’s lips as he dipped forward to press their foreheads together.

“Yes,” he admitted quietly. Lance let out a soft laugh and leaned in until their mouths just barely brushed against each other.

“See? Mind reader,” he whispered before closing the last bit of space between them.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes, Lance wished they didn’t have to keep Keith’s identity secret. Sometimes he wished he didn’t have to recount a fake story to people who asked them how they met and fell in love. Sometimes he wished he was someone else; someone with the power to change the kingdom. Someone with enough power to clear up the misunderstandings surrounding dragons, or at least the better half of them. Sometimes it got exhausting to keep a secret this big, to bite his tongue when he held Keith's hand and listened to someone talking about getting rid of dragons once and for all.

But there were other moments, moments that made it all worth it. Moments like Pidge placing a trembling hand on red scales, like Hunk trying to bake a bread bigger than the oven could handle, like Shiro quietly apologizing to a dragon for the scar at its side. There were the moments where Pidge and Hunk inspected Keith’s wings in an attempt to create a machine that would allow them to fly, moments where Shiro talked to Keith about getting into contact with the good dragons. Moments where the five of them shared a smile: the smile of a group of friends that trusted each other with secrets that were bigger than the kingdom at its current state could handle.

Of course Lance sometimes wished that they could have had a perfect ending. An ending with no more secrets, with no more evil dragons around and a reformed kingdom that accepts everyone, regardless of reputation. But this was reality and reality was never perfect. Still, when he looked at his friends sitting in a circle at a clearing in the forest, laughing together and throwing pebbles at Keith in his dragon because the wind had extinguished the fire once again, he was satisfied with this. He saw his friends happy and open with each other, closer than they had ever been before.

Sometimes, Lance thought, imperfect didn’t mean less. Besides, their lives weren’t over yet. They had years to work on it still; who was to say that their ending couldn’t become perfect?

But for now-

 

“Hey, Keith.”

Groaning, Keith turned away from him. Lance didn’t let himself be deterred though, he scurried after him and pulled him against his chest. The bed didn’t leave a lot of room for escape anyway.

“Keeeiiiiith.”

“What, Lance?” Keith turned his head around to give a half-hearted glare over his shoulder. His bedhead ruined the picture, making him seem soft and pouty instead of annoyed. Lance grinned and squeezed him a little tighter.

“Kiss me?”

Keith rolled his eyes and flopped back down. “No. Now let me sleep.”

“But Keith!”

“No.”

“Keith, Keith, Keith!”

“Ugh! Why do you always have to be so _annoying_?!” Keith complained but turned around to peck Lance’s cheek anyway. “There. Better now?”

“Much better,” Lance confirmed and kissed Keith’s nose. Then he wiggled further down the cushions, nuzzling his face against Keith’s chest. He felt Keith’s sigh more than heard it and smiled happily when one of Keith’s hands came up to play with his hair.

“I fucking hate you, you know that? That’s the entire reason you woke me up for?”

“Mh-hm. ‘s a good one. Very important. I might die if I don't get my daily dose of affection.”

Keith sighed again before pressing another kiss onto the top of Lance’s head. “I don't know why I put up with you.”

“You love me.”

There was no reply, but Lance knew how to interpret the tightening of Keith’s embrace.

  

-for now, this was enough.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> My speciality - medieval-ish fantasy AUs where the characters are speaking modern English *throws glitter*
> 
> Anyway, heya guys, long time to see :D Sorry for that, I was (and still am) very busy with uni. You can still find me at [tumblr](http://keiths-stupid-mullet.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/ka_sape) though, I am always happy to talk to new people. Thanks for reading!! :D


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